THE  TRIAL  ©  CRUCIFIXION 

OF  JBSUS  CHRIST 

OF -NAZARETH 


.  BRODRICK 


bectioa      .  (D  ,  J5  06 


THE    TRIAL   AND    CRUCIFIXION 

OF 

JESUS   CHRIST    OF   NAZARETH 


THE   TRIAL 

AND   CRUCIFIXION 

OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

OF   NAZARETH 


BY    M.    BRODRICK 

JOINT   AUTHOR  Of   "CONCISE   DICTIONARY  OF  EGYPTIAN   AKCHjEOLOCK. 

EDITOR   OF  MURRAY'S    "REVISED   HANDBOOK  FOR    PALESTINE 

AND   SYRIA,"    ETC.,    ETC. 


NEW   YORK 

LONGMANS  GREEN  &  COMPANY 

London:  JOHN   MURRAY 

1908 


PrittUd  in  Great  Britain. 


PREFACE 

The  following  pages  are  the  substance  of 
lectures  which  have  been  delivered  at 
various  times  and  in  many  places  other 
than  the  United  Kingdom,  and  it  is  in 
response  to  the  request  of  many  members 
of  my  audiences  to  possess  them  in  per- 
manent form  that  I  venture  to  publish 
them. 

They  are  purely  historical  and  legal, 
and  the  subject  has  been  purposely  treated 
from  a  formal  and  prosaic  standpoint. 

The  four  Gospels  alone  are  their  basis, 
and  thus  many  traditions  and  hypotheses 
which  bear  the  stamp  of  possibility  are 
ignored  as  not  sufficiently  capable  of  proof. 

The    statements    made    about    the    Jews 

may  at   first  sight   appear  to  be   somewhat 

severe,  but  they  can  be  proved    both    from 

the    Gospels   and    secular    history,    and,    of 
vii 


VUl  PREFACE 

course,  only  apply  to  the  people  as  they 
were  in  the  days  of  Christ. 

There  are  many  references  to  both  Jewish 
and  English  writers  which  I  should  like 
to  have  given ;  but  illness  and  enforced 
absence  from  England  have  prevented  me 
from  consulting  the  authors  themselves,  and 
giving  the  exact  chapter  and  section  of 
their  works. 

On  page  39  reference  is  made  to  the  40 
vols,  of  the  Talmud.  The  Editio  Princeps, 
however,  is  in  12  vols.,  and  an  edition  of 
1664,  published  in  Amsterdam,  is  printed  in 
19  vols. 

There  are  also  editions  of  the  Mishna  in 
3  vols,  and  6  vols,  as  well  as  that  in  1 2  vols. 

I    have    therefore    not    attempted    to    put 

the  lectures    into    literary   shape,   but    have 

left    them   in   the   colloquial    form    in   which 

they  were  given,  trusting  that  with  all  their 

failings    they    may   not    be   found    unhelpful 

to  a   sober  and  accurate   realisation   of  the 

last   day   of    Our    Lord's   pre  -  Resurrection 

life. 

M.  B. 

BORDIGHERA,    I908. 


CONTENTS 
LECTURE   I 

THE   ARREST 


Page 


The  reason  for  the  trial  of  Christ — Comparison 
between  the  Gospels  and  Jewish  and  Roman 
law — The  purely  historical  and  legal  stand- 
point of  the  lectures — Testimony  of  Josephus 
and  Tacitus  —  Review  of  Christ's  ministry — 
His  propaganda  of  reform — His  stern  rebuke 
of  evil — The  Jews — Christ's  new  teaching — 
Popular  expectation  of  the  Messiah — Accusa- 
tions formulated  against  the  Preacher  — 
Attempts  made  to  destroy  Him — The  meet- 
ing of  the  Council — The  advice  of  Caiaphas — 
The  arrest — The  "band"  and  "chief  captain" 
— Legality  of  the  arrest — Jewish  legislature — 
The  Talmud  and  the  Rabbis — The  law — The 
Sanhedrin  —  The  Pharisees  —  The  Sadducees 
— The  scribes 1-60 


LECTURE    II 

THE   TRIAL  AND   CONDEMNATION 

Annas   ben    Seth  —  The    private    interrogation  — 
Joseph  Caiaphas  the  high  priest — The  palace 
ix 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

—  The  probable  sequence  of  events  —  Four 
fundamental  principles  of  Hebrew  justice — Im- 
portance of  the  witnesses — Method  of  criminal 
procedure — Forms  of  oral  evidence — Stoning — 
The  Hakiroth — The  two  charges — Illegal  pro- 
ceeding of  Caiaphas  —  The  rejection  of  the 
Messiah — The  condemnation  —  Power  of  the 
Sanhedrin  —  Pontius  Pilate  —  The  Praetorium 
— The  accusation — Pilate's  question — Pilate's 
just  verdict — Pilate's  failure  to  execute  justice 
— The  condemnation  of  Christ  .        .        .        .     61-130 


LECTURE    III 

THE  CRUCIFIXION   AND  THE  SITE  OF  THE   HOLY 
SEPULCHRE 

Christ  delivered  to  the  Roman  soldiers — The  site 
of  Golgotha — History  of  this  place-name — 
The  crucifixion — History  of  this  punishment — 
Various  forms  of  the  cross — Method  of  cruci- 
fixion —  "  Wine  mingled  with  myrrh  "  —  The 
titulus  —  Joseph's  tomb  —  No  cultus  of  the 
sacred  tomb  in  Apostolic  times — No  mention 
of  it  by  early  pilgrims — The  Emperor  Con- 
stantine— The  search  for  the  Holy  Sepulchre — 
Its  miraculous  discovery — Suggested  sites — 
The  true  site  probably  lost      .        .        .        .131-191 


BOOKS    REFERRED    TO    BY    THE 
AUTHOR. 

Carini,  Passione  di  Christo. 
Cassiodorus,  Chronicles. 
Castelli,  La  legge  del  popolo  ebreo. 
Cicero,  Letter  to  Verres  j  Pro  Rabirio. 

Dictionary  of  the  Bible  (Hastings). 

Eusebius,  Life  of  Constajttine ;  Praise  of  Constantine ;   On 
the  Theophania. 

Gatti,  Album  de  Rossi. 

Harnack,  History  of  Dogma. 

Josephus,  Antiquities  of  the  fetus  ;   Wars  of  the  few  s. 

Keim,  fesus  von  Nazara. 

Levi,  Sulla  teocrazzia  mosaica. 

Maimonides,  De  Synedriis. 

Migne,  Patrologia  Graeca ;  Patrologia  Latina. 

Mommsen,  Provifices  de  Rome  de  Cesar  a  Diocletian. 

Palestine  Exploration  Fund  Quarterly  Statements. 

Palestine  Pilgrims'  Texts. 

Petrucelli  della  Gattina,  Memorie  di  Giuda. 

Rabbinowicz,  Legislation  criminelle  du  Talmud. 
Renan,  Histoire  du  peuple  d'' Israel. 
Roman,  The,  Penal  Code, 

xi 


Xll        BOOKS     REFERRED    TO    BY    THE    AUTHOR 

Salvador,  Histoire  des  institutions  de  Moise  ct  du  fieuple 

Hebreuj  La  loi  de  Moise. 
Schiirer,  History  of  the  Jewish  People. 
Schwab,  Le  Talmud  de  Jerusaletn. 
Suetonius,  Lives  of  the  CcEsars. 

Tacitus,  Annals. 

Talmud,  The,  of  Babylon. 

Talmud,  The,  of  Jerusalem. 

Taylor  Innes,  lyie  Trial  of  Jesus  Christ. 

Wilson,  Golgotha  and  the  Holy  Sepulchre 


LECTURE    I 


THE     ARREST 


"On  three  things  stand  the  world — on  Law,  on 
Worship,  and  on  Charity  " 

The  closing  scenes  of  the  life  of  Jesus 
Christ  are  familiar  to  us  all ;  in  a  certain 
sense  they  are  almost  too  familiar,  for  we 
have  heard  them  read  and  preached  upon 
so  often,  that  though  the  words  reach  our 
ears  I  think  they  sometimes  fail  to  penetrate 
our  brain. 

It  is  possible  to  read  the  New  Testament 
until  it  is  taken  for  granted,  instead  of  being 
known  intelligently  —  to  read  it  with  the 
spirit,  yet  not  with  the  understanding. 

For  some  people  it  is  sufficient  to  accept 
the  fact  that  Christ's  condemnation  and  death 
were  unjust,  and  to  contemplate  them  from 
their  theological  and  spiritual  aspect ;  but 
there  are  also  a  great  many  who  are  not 
content  to  give  a  mere  spiritual  acquiescence 
in  a  belief,  the  result  of  which  has  altered  the 
whole  course  of  Humanity.     They  desire  to 

I  A 


2  THE    ARREST  [Lkct. 

know  from  a  historical  point  of  view  why 
the  Jews  were  so  relentless  in  their  persecu- 
tion of  the  new  Teacher,  and  from  a  legal 
point  of  view  how  the  law  of  Israel  was  set 
aside. 

Much  has  been  written  concerning  the 
last  hours  of  Our  Lord's  life,  chiefly  from 
their  devotional  and  theological  point  of 
view,  but  from  the  legal  and  purely  human 
aspect  there  is  not  much  in  popular  form 
as  the  works  of  the  best  authorities  are 
technical,  and  not  easily  within  the  reach 
of  the  general  reader. 

The  whole  story  is  a  wondrously  human 
document.  It  is  nothino-  less  than  the  trial 
of  a  Hebrew  citizen  in  the  sacred  city  itself 
and  before  the  highest  tribunal  in  Jewry, 
upon  a  count  so  grave  that  if  it  could  be 
proved,  nothing  but  the  utmost  penalty  of 
the  law  awaited  him,  and  that  carried  out 
with  all  speed  after  the  delivery  of  the 
sentence.  A  sentence  from  which  there 
could  be  no  appeal.  Every  Christian  knows 
that  the  arrest  of  Christ  was  illegal,  His  trial 
conducted  unjustly,  His  condemnation  and 
death  nothing  short  of  deliberate  murder ; 
but  how  many  could  clearly  state  where 
the  Jewish  law  miscarried?     All  will  admit 


I.]  PURPOSE    OF    THE    BOOK  3 

that  Pontius  Pilate  failed  to  administer  the 
Roman  law  with  uprightness  and  justice, 
yet  in  what  manner  did  he  fail  ?  All  will 
acknowledge  that  the  punishment  of  cruci- 
fixion was  a  lingering  and  painful  one,  yet 
how  many  could  accurately  describe,  even 
if  they  knew  correctly  the  method  of  its 
infliction  ?  What  I  propose  to  do  in  these 
lectures  is  to  ask  you  to  examine  carefully 
and  in  sequence  the  various  details  of  Our 
Lord's  trial  and  death,  and  I  think  you  will 
agree  that  only  by  a  comparison  of  the 
Gospels  with  Jewish  and  Roman  law,  can 
we  appreciate  or  even  in  one  or  two 
instances  understand  Christ's  attitude  before 
His  accusers. 

Further,  that  there  shall  arise  no  mis- 
understandings between  us,  let  me  make  it 
quite  clear  that  everything  will  be  looked 
at  from  the  hitman  standpoint  alone,  I  shall 
in  no  way  trench  upon  theology  or  dogma, 
nor  upon  any  points  connected  with  the 
Divine  Nature  of  Our  Lord.  All  terms 
used  will  bear  their  literal  sense,  and  every- 
thing that  touches  upon  the  religious  side 
of  the  subject  will  be  eliminated. 

We  will  look  at  the  events,  as  they  took 


4  THE    ARREST  [Lect, 

place,  in  the  dry,  clear  light  of  Law  and 
History  and  in  a  strictly  formal  method. 

Our  historical  data  will  be  the  four 
Gospels,  the  only  authentic  contemporaneous 
records  that  we  have  at  present ;  of  classical 
allusions  to  Jesus  Christ  there  are — so  far 
as  I  know — only  two  direct  ones,  those  of 
Josephus  the  Jew  and  Tacitus  the  Roman, 
though  there  are  indirect  allusions  to  the 
founder  of  the  Christian  religion  in  Suetonius, 
Lucian,  Pliny  the  Elder,  and  Epictetus. 
Here  and  there  throughout  the  Talmud 
there  are  also  references  to  Him  couched 
in  derogatory  terms,  but  of  no  value  histori- 
cally, and  I  believe  they  have  been  suppressed 
by  the  Censor  in  modern  printed  copies. 

Josephus  says,  "At  that  time  lived  Jesus, 
a  wise  man,  if  he  could  be  called  wise.  He 
did  marvellous  things,  and  was  the  master 
of  those  men  who  received  the  truth  with 
joy.  He,  moreover,  brought  over  many 
Jews  to  his  side  as  also  many  foreigners  of 
the  Greek  countries.  This  was  the  Christ. 
When,  on  the  accusation  of  the  most 
influential  men  among  us,  Pilate  sentenced 
him  to  death  on  the  cross,  his  followers 
nevertheless  did  not  forsake  him.  He 
appeared   among    them   on   the   third   day, 


I.]  TESTIMONY    OF    JOSEPHUS  5 

because  divine  prophecies  had  foretold  of 
him  this  and  many  other  miracles.  Up  to 
the  present  time  the  Christian  sect  —  so- 
called  after  him — has  not  ceased  to  exist."^ 
Many  classical  scholars  look  upon  this 
passage  as  added  by  another  hand  at  a 
later  date.  Tacitus  is  very  explicit.  "  In 
order  to  quiet  the  report,^  Nero  accused 
and  punished  with  the  most  refined  tortures, 
those  who  with  perverse  obstinacy  called 
themselves  Christians.  The  author  of  this 
name  was  Christ,  who,  during  the  reign  of 
Tiberius,  was  executed  by  the  Procurator 
Pontius  Pilate."^ 

To  understand  the  causes  which  led  up 
to  the  arrest  of  Jesus  Christ,  we  must  look 
at  the  history  of  His  three  years'  ministry. 
During  that  time  He  had  lived,  so  to  say,  in 
the  sight  of  all  men,  and  under  the  scrutiny 
of  a  people  who  are  and  always  have  been 
intensely  critical  of  their  teachers.  He  had 
passed  up  and  down  the  land  from  Galilee 
to  Judsea,  leading  as  every  one  knew  a 
life  of  poverty  and  the  sternest  asceticism 

^  Aniiq.jud.f  xviii.  cap.  iv. 

"^  Caused  by  the  great  fire  in  Rome. 

^  Ann.,  XV.  44. 


6  THE    ARREST  [Lect. 

and  self-denial ;  ofttlmes,  as  He  Himself  tells 
us,  not  knowing  where  to  lay  His  head. 

He  had  publicly  healed  the  sick  and 
cleansed  the  lepers,  opened  the  eyes  of  the 
blind,  and  unstopped  the  ears  of  the  deaf; 
He  had  made  "the  lame  man  to  leap  as 
an  hart,"  and  "  the  tongue  of  the  dumb  to 
sing."  He  had  fed  the  hungry  and  calmed 
the  storm,  had  cured  the  epileptic  and  blessed 
the  little  children,  had  bidden  the  evil  demons 
that  possessed  a  man  body  and  soul  begone 
and  leave  him,  and  He  had  on  three  occasions 
raised  to  life  those  who  were  physically  dead. 
Nay  more.  He  had  gone  further,  and  had 
preached  repentance  and  the  coming  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God  amongst  humanity.  He 
had  even  forgiven  the  sins  of  the  penitent 
in  heart  and  of  the  diseased  in  body,  and 
had  sent  them  away  with  words  of  encourage- 
ment and  hope  ;  commanding  them  to  lead 
a  new  life,  and  assuring  them  that  in  spite 
of  the  severity  of  priests  and  Pharisees  He 
would  not  condemn  them,  for  that  He  had 
not  come  "to  break  the  bruised  reed,  nor 
quench  the  smoking  flax." 

These  gracious  deeds  were  not  done  to 
His  fellow  -  countrymen  and  to  people  of 
His  own  faith  alone,  but  also  to  Greek  and 


I.]  PURPOSE    OF    CHRIST'S    MINISTRY  7 

Samaritan,  the  lost  sheep  of  the  House  of 
Israel  and  the  Roman  centurion. 

He  had  taught  incessantly  during  those 
three  years — openly  in  the  Temple,  in  the 
local  synagogues,  on  the  hillside,  and  in 
a  boat  on  the  lake  of  Gennesaret  —  in  fact 
anywhere  and  everywhere  where  men  would 
listen  to  His  teaching.  In  private  also  had 
He  spoken  deeply  and  earnestly  to  Martha 
and  Mary  at  Bethany,  and  to  Nicodemus 
in  the  midnight  hour.  All  acknowledged 
as  they  heard  Him  that  "never  man  spake 
as  this  man,"  for  "  He  taught  with  authority 
and  not  as  the  scribes."  His  message 
was  eminently  fitted  to  the  comprehension 
of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  from  the 
learned  master  in  Israel,  to  the  ignorant 
Roman  malefactor  dying  beside  Him. 

Every  one  who  heard  Him  had  been 
struck  with  the  gracious  words  which  pro- 
ceeded out  of  His  mouth,  very  different 
indeed  from  the  dogmatism  of  the  scribes, 
Pharisees  and  lawyers,  who  insisted  upon 
the  strictest  keeping  of  the  letter  of  the  law, 
the  spirit  of  which  they  frequently  evaded,^ 
and  while  lading  men  with  burdens  grievous 

1  Matt.  XV.  3-15;  xxiii.  3;  Mark  vii.  5-9;  Luke  xi. 
42-45. 


8  THE    ARREST  [Lect. 

to  be  borne,  touched  not  those  burdens  with 
one  of  their  fingers/ 

He  spoke  not  only  smooth  words  to  the 
people.  His  utterances  were  at  times 
charged  with  fiercest  denunciation  against 
those  who  persisted  in  walking  in  hypocrisy 
and  deceit.  He  fearlessly  and  with  unflinch- 
ing courage  hurled  "winged  words"  of 
fiery  indignation  and  scathing  sarcasm 
upon  Pharisees  and  Sadducees,  priests  and 
lawyers.  He  attacked  them,  not  because 
they  were  powers  in  high  places,  but  because 
being  called  upon  by  birth,  by  education,  and 
by  knowledge,  to  responsible  and  public 
positions  in  Israel,  they  were  abusing  instead 
of  using  their  powers.  They  knew  the  right, 
and  deliberately  chose  the  wrong.  He 
unhesitatingly  denounced  them  as  hypocrites, 
blind  guides,  serpents,  and  the  "offspring 
of  vipers";"  as  white- washed  sepulchres  full 
of  uncleanness.  He  bade  His  followers 
beware  of  the  leaven,  of  the  Pharisees,  the 
Sadducees,  and  the  Herodians,^  namely  their 
teaching,  their  example  and  their  life.  He 
accused  them  of  compassing  sea  and  land 

^  Matt,  xxiii.  23-33  ;  Luke  xi.  39-52. 

2  Matt.  V.  20 ;  xiii.  3-34  ;  xv.  3-15  ;  xxii.  18. 

'  Matt.  xvi.  6 ;  Mark  viii.  15  ;  Luke  xii.  i. 


r.]    CENSURE   OF   PHARISEES   AND   SADDUCEES     9 

to  make  one  proselyte,  and  when  they  had 
secured  him  they  made  him  twofold  more 
the  child  of  Gehenna  than  they  were  them- 
selves,^ and  He  boldly  flung  it  at  them  that 
they  should  not  escape  the  judgment  of 
Gehenna.  He  openly  brought  against  them 
that  most  terrible  of  all  accusations,  that  they 
hid  the  key  of  knowledge,'  and  that  while 
not  entering  into  the  Kingdom  themselves 
they  prevented  from  going  in  many  who 
fain  would  do  so.^  Finally,  with  the  shadows 
of  suffering  and  death  hanging  over  Him, 
He  poured  forth  the  vials  of  His  wrath  upon 
them  all  collectively,  and  told  them  that 
they  were  of  their  father  the  devil,  and  his 
lusts  they  would  do  ;  consequently  if  they 
continued  to  work  his  works  they  should 
die  in  their  sins  ;  ^  and  then  as  if  to  reassure 
them,  He  sarcastically  observed  that  they 
need  not  be  afraid  that  He  would  accuse 
them  to  the  Father,  that  Moses  on  whom 
they  set  their  hopes  would  do  that,  and  that 
into  the  Kingdom  of  God,  out  of  which  they 
were  thrusting  many,  the  publicans  and  the 
harlots  should  enter  before  them.^ 

Can  you  wonder  that  they   hated   Him? 

*  Matt,  xxiii.  15.         '^  Matt,  xxiii.  13.         *  Luke  xi.  57. 
*  John  viii.  15-35.  *  Matt.  xxi.  31. 

B 


10  THE    ARREST  [Lect. 

for  His  words  must  have  stung  their  guilty 
consciences  like  red-hot  arrows  :  and  are  you 
surprised  that  at  last  they  felt  they  could 
bear  it  no  longer,  and  sought  for  some  means 
of  stopping  the  preaching  of  the  Prophet  of 
Nazareth  ? 

The  scribes  and  Pharisees,  the  bulk  of 
whom  at  this  period  were  religious  hypocrites, 
disliked  Him  ;  the  Sadducees  and  Herodians 
— who  were  political  opportunists  —  were 
bitterly  antagonistic  to  Him.  These  latter 
who  thought  only  of  keeping  friends  with 
the  Roman  power  hated  any  idea  of 
reformation,  and  were  seized  with  a  panic 
at  any  suggestion  of  revolution  or  even  of 
tumult,  so  they  were  alarmed  at  possible 
consequences. 

And  it  was  Reform  that  the  Master  cease- 
lessly and  untiringly  inculcated  —  Reform 
not  Revolution,  Fulfilment  not  Destruction. 
It  was  not  the  abrogation  of  the  law,  but 
the  keeping  of  the  law  that  Christ  insisted 
upon,  while  at  the  same  time  He  showed  His 
co-religionists  that  the  blind  following  of  the 
letter  was  not  sufficient,  and  that  they  could 
even  transgress  the  spirit  of  the  Divine  Law 
by  tying  themselves  down  too  rigidly  to  the 
dead  traditions  of  the  elders. 


I.]  REFORMATION   NOT  REVOLUTION  II 

For    Himself,    He    had   as   a   pious    Jew 
fulfilled  all  the  requirements  of  the  Mosaic 
code.      He   had    been    circumcised   on    the 
eighth    day,    and    duly    presented    in     the 
Temple ;   He  went  up  to  Jerusalem  for  the 
Passover  and  other  Jewish  feasts ;  and  He 
was  baptized   by  John  at  the   beginning  of 
His  ministry   "  for  thus   it   becometh  us  to 
fulfil    all     righteousness."       Moreover,     He 
required    His    disciples    also    to    keep    the 
observances  of  the  Levitical  law,  and  sent  the 
healed  leper  to  show  himself  to   the    priest 
and  make  the  required  offering.     As  a  good 
citizen   He   paid  the  half  shekel  demanded 
by   the   Roman  Procurator  from   every  one 
over   twenty   years   of  age,   and   bade    His 
disciples  render  to  Caesar  his  due.     He  gave 
them  object  lessons  also  on  the  keeping  of 
the    spirit    of   the    Law   times    without  end, 
as,  when  on  the  Sabbath  Day  He  healed  the 
man  with   the  dropsy,    released   the   woman 
"  whom  Satan  hath  bound  lo  !  these  eighteen 
years,"  and  cured  the  man  too  old  and  too 
feeble   to  get   by   himself  into   the   healing 
waters  of  Bethesda. 

One  asks  the  question  was  it  only  because 
Christ  spoke  so  openly,  continuously,  and 
uncompromisingly     against     the     hypocrisy 


12  THE    ARREST  [Lect. 

and  avarice  of  the  rulers  in  Jewry  that  they 
all  hated  Him  so  bitterly  ?  May  we  not  find 
in  the  troubled  history  of  the  Jews  at  this 
period  some  political  reason  also  for  their 
persistent  determination  to  compass  His 
death  ? 

Renan,  in  his  valuable  Histoire  du  Peuple 
^Israel,  gives  us  a  clue  to  the  national 
feeling  and  temper  in  Palestine  under  the 
later  high  priests.  In  looking  at  the  history 
of  the  Hebrews,  we  find  that  after  centuries 
of  pastoral  life  and  patriarchal  government, 
they  suddenly  burst  into  a  stationary  and 
national  life,  asking  for  and  obtaining  a  king 
to  rule  over  them.  They  were  neither  pre- 
pared for  it  nor  was  it  in  any  respect  suited 
to  their  racial  characteristics.  The  chief- 
tain's tent  and  the  movable  ark  were  far 
more  in  accordance  with  their  temperament 
and  instincts  than  Solomon's  Palace  and  the 
Temple  at  Jerusalem.  There  was  never 
really  any  national  ideal  among  the  Jews. 
Very  conservative,  very  superstitious,  and 
very  prejudiced,  they  were  originally  poly- 
theists,  then  became  nominally  monotheists 
with  Jehovah  recognised  as  their  one  official 
deity,  yet  until  the  days  of  the  Exile  they 
clung  to  their  Teraphim  and  their  Ephods, 


h]  JEWISH    HISTORY  Ij 

their  Mazzebahs  and  their  Asherahs.  Few 
were  the  years  that  saw  a  king  over  an  un- 
divided people  ;  and  few  and  troublous  were 
the  centuries  that  saw  first  the  division  into 
two  parts,  and  then  the  final  break-up  of  that 
short  -  lived  kingdom.  The  sad  period  of 
the  Exile  and  Captivity  followed,  and  when 
Judah  once  more  returned  to  the  land  of 
their  fathers  it  was  to  a  kingless  country 
and  a  ruined  Temple. 

Then  arose  the  sway  of  the  high  priests, 
and  nominally  a  theocratic  government ; 
and  while  the  nation,  busy  in  rebuilding 
the  Temple  and  re  -  arranging  the  law 
never  consolidated  itself,  the  world  around 
was  arming  for  conquest.  We  all  know  the 
miserable  story  of  Palestine  under  Seleucids 
and  Romans,  with  its  one  bright  page  of 
Hasmonican  courage  and  devotion,  then 
the  curtain  comes  down  on  independent 
national  life,  and  the  country  becomes 
nought  but  an  appanage  of  Rome  and  the 
inhabitants  thereof  no  longer  a  free  people. 

Primarily  the  exile  embittered  the  Jews, 
and  after  their  return  to  their  own  land  the 
siding  of  the  aristocratic  classes  with  the 
Roman  rulers,  and  the  avarice  and  hypo- 
crisy of  the  priests  and  Pharisees  filled  the 


14  THE    ARREST  [Lkct. 

loyal  Jews  —  who  were  the  masses  —  with 
indignation  and  disgust.  Can  you  wonder 
that  when  a  Prophet  arose,  preaching  Re- 
generation and  Reform  both  religious  and 
social,  that  "the  common  people  heard  Him 
gladly,"  and  hopes  arose  of  the  advent  at 
no  distant  day  of  the  Messiah — the  Deliverer 
— the  King  ?  The  whole  nation  was  strung 
up  at  this  time  into  such  a  state  of  tension 
that  the  slightest  event  was  sufficient  to 
produce  political  riot,  or  religious  tumult ; 
and  on  many  occasions  it  was  only  the  firm 
hand  of  the  Roman  Procurator  and  the 
close  proximity  of  six  thousand  soldiers, 
that  saved  Jerusalem  from  revolutionary 
outbursts. 

This  new  teaching  had  stirred  up  all 
Jewry  so  much  so  that  a  party  composed 
of  scribes  and  Pharisees  actually  went  down 
from  Jerusalem  to  Galilee,  to  interview  the 
Prophet,  and  stop  the  propaganda  —  if 
possible — from  spreading  further.  This  was 
no  easy  matter,  for  He  had  the  ear  of  the 
people.  The  whole  nation  was  on  the  tip- 
toe of  expectation,  looking  for  the  Deliverer. 
Over  and  over  again  in  the  four  Gospels 
do  we   find   this   to   be   the   case.     At   the 


I,]    POPULAR   EXPECTATION   OF  THE   MESSIAH     1 5 

baptism  of  Christ,  "as  all  the  people  were 
in  expectation,"  John  the  Baptist  had  pointed 
Him  out  as  the  Anointed  of  whom  he  (John) 
was  but  the  forerunner.^  "Art  thou  He  that 
should  come,  or  look  we  for  another  ? "  was 
the  question  put  to  Him  in  varied  forms 
times  and  again,  both  by  the  disciples  of 
the  Baptist  and  by  His  own  followers. 

His  doctrines  differed  essentially  from 
those  of  their  priests  and  lawyers,  and 
were  so  full  of  graciousness  and  love  that 
they  were  compelled  to  acknowledge  that 
here  was  no  ordinary  prophet,  but  "a  new 
teaching," "  Thus  the  Messianic  hope  found 
expression,  and  many  of  the  Jews  felt  that 
this  must  be  the  Deliverer  who  should  come 
to  Zion.  They  admitted  first,  that  "a  great 
prophet  hath  risen  up  among  us,"  and  that 
God  hath  visited  His  people  ;  and  then ,  as 
He  became  more  widely  seen  and  known 
of  His  fellow  -  countrymen,  they  acknow- 
ledged in  a  burst  of  enthusiasm  that  He 
was  "the  Son  of  David,"  "the  Holy  One 
of  God,"  "the  Christ  of  God,"  and  finally, 
"the  King  of  Israel" — the  Messiah.  But 
how  little  did  the  Hebrew  nation  grasp 
the  true  nature  and   office  of  the  Messiah. 

^  Luke  iii.  15  ;  John.  i.  29-34.  2  Mark  i.  27. 


l6  THE    ARREST  [Lect. 

Their  hearts'  desire  was  for  an  earthly 
potentate  who  should  restore  again  the 
kingdom  to  Israel,  a  royal  soldier  who  would 
release  them  from  the  yoke  of  Rome  and 
lead  them  to  victory,  a  king  greater  than 
Solomon  ;  one  who  should  make  their  nation 
higher  than  all  that  were  in  the  earth,  who 
would  bring  back  the  scattered  ones  from 
far  and  near,  and  rebuild  Jerusalem  where 
His  throne  should  be  established  for  ever 
and  men  should  "bless  themselves  in  His 
name."  It  was  not  until  the  populace  at  last 
began  to  realise  that  this  was  no  part  of 
Christ's  mission  that  they — ever  fickle  and 
easily  disappointed — began  to  be  offended 
at  Him,  and  murmurs  arose  that,  after  all, 
He  was  but  the  carjDenter's  son.  "His  father 
and  mother  we  know  ;  "  "  We  know  this  man 
whence  He  is,  but  when  the  Christ  cometh 
no  man  knoweth  whence  He  is;"  "Can  it 
be  that  the  rulers  indeed  know  that  this 
is  the  Christ  ? "  and  so  on.  Thus  already 
in  the  three  short  years  of  His  ministry 
had  the  Master  begun  to  see  fulfilled  His 
own  words,  that  He  came  to  cast  fire  upon 
the  earth,  and  to  bring  not  peace,  but  a 
sword. 


r.]  TWO    OPPOSING    FORCES  1 7 

So  we  find  that  there  arose  against  Him 
two  powerful  factions ;  on  the  one  hand 
the  priests  and  the  Pharisees,  and  on  the 
other  the  Sadducees,  and  to  these  must  be 
added  a  body  of  His  own  countrymen  who 
were  almost  more  dangerous,  because  more 
uneducated  and  irresponsible.  Swayed  now 
this  way,  now  that,  like  sedges  in  a  breeze, 
neither  the  Sanhedrin  on  the  one  hand,  nor 
the  Teacher  Himself  on  the  other,  could  tell 
from  day  to  day  what  their  attitude  might 
be.  To-day  they  would  take  Him  by  force 
and  make  Him  a  king,  and  to-morrow  try 
to  throw  Him  down  headlong  from  the  hill 
whereon  their  city  was  built.  They  would 
shout  Hosanna  to  the  Son  of  David  to-day, 
and  to-morrow  take  up  stones  to  cast  at  Him. 

Palestine  was  on  the  verge  of  a  religious 
revolt,  and  any  disturbance  would  at  once 
bring  down  with  severity  the  iron  hand  of 
Rome.  The  Jews,  more  than  any  other 
subject  people,  had  been  allowed  greater 
freedom  in  the  management  of  their  own  in- 
ternal and  municipal  afiairs  and  in  the  practice 
of  their  religion  and  ritual ;  so  that  any- 
thing like  a  breach  of  the  peace  or  sedition, 
if  known  to  the  Procurator,  would  be  likely 
to  considerably  curtail  these  privileges. 


l8  THE    ARREST  [Lkct. 

Therefore  for  the  poHtical  welfare  of  the 
nation  the  Teacher  must  be  suppressed. 

The  authorities  first  tried  coercion  and 
decreed,  that  if  "any  man  should  confess 
that  Jesus  was  the  Christ  he  should  be 
put  out  of  the  synagogue,"^  nevertheless, 
some  of  the  rulers  did  believe  on  Him, 
though  secretly,  for  fear  of  the  Pharisees,^ 
and  multitudes  of  the  common  people  still 
heard  Him  gladly. 

Next,  accusations  were  launched  against 
Him  of  such  a  nature  that  they  amounted 
practically  to  that  most  hideous  of  all 
Jewish  crimes,  Lcesce  Majestatis  Divines, 
i.e.,  treason  against  the  Deity,  which  in 
the  statutes  of  the  Hebrew  commonwealth 
assumed  a  significance  that  we  can  hardly 
realise.  To  the  Jews  Jehovah  was  their 
personal  and  absolute  ruler.  Kings,  judges, 
and  high  priests  were  not  so  much  His 
earthly  representatives,  as  merely  those 
courtiers  tb  whom  He  graciously  permitted 
access  to  His  presence  chamber.  They 
conveyed  His  word,  which  was  law,  to 
the  people  of  Israel.  Therefore  in  that 
commonwealth   anything    that    savoured   of 

^  John  ix.  22.  ^  John  xii.  42. 


I.]  FIRST  ATTEMPT  ON  THE   LIFE   OF   CHRIST      19 

"perverting  the  people,"  or  sorcery,  or  of 
playing  the  part  of  a  ** false  prophet,"  or 
of  "destroying  this  place  and  changing  the 
customs  which  Moses  delivered  unto  us," 
or  even  the  slightest  attempt  made  to  alter 
the  divine  system  of  the  law  came  under 
the  head  of  "constructive  treason,"  while 
to  make  one's  self  out  to  be  the  Son  of 
God  and  equal  to  God,  unless  it  could  be 
proved,  was  blasphemy. 

The  punishment  for  treason  against  God 
and  for  blasphemy  was  death. 

Once  during  the  early  part  of  His 
ministry  the  Pharisees  had  been  so  angry 
with  Him  for  publicly  in  the  synagogue 
and  on  the  Sabbath  Day,  healing  the  man 
with  the  withered  hand,  that  they  "  took 
counsel  against  Him  how  they  might 
destroy  Him";^  but  He  withdrew  from 
them.  Again,  later,  the  rulers — presumably 
the  Sanhedrin  —  deliberately  planned  how 
they  might  compass  without  failure  the 
arrest  of  the  Prophet  of  Nazareth.  We 
read  of  this  first  attempt  in  John  vii.  32, 
when  at  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  during 
the  autumn  of  a.d.  28  (?),  about  six 
months  before  the  Passover  "the  chief 
^  Matt.  xii.  14. 


20  THE    ARREST  [Lect. 

priests  and  Pharisees  sent  officers  to  take 
Him "  in  the  Temple  courts  where  He 
was  teaching,  and  where  evidently  a  dis- 
turbance was  being  created.  Some  of  His 
hearers  said,  "This  is  the  Christ"  others 
again  scorned  the  idea,  and  "there  was  a 
division  among  them."  The  Temple  officers 
(vTTtjperai),  evidently  afraid  of  the  temper 
of  the  populace,  returned  without  Him  say- 
ing, "  Never  man  spake  like  this  man,"  to 
be  answered  by  the  scornful  remark  of  the 
Pharisees,  "Are  ye  also  led  astray?  Hath 
any  of  the  rulers  believed  on  Him  or 
of  the  Pharisees  ?  But  this  people  which 
knoweth  not  the  Law  is  accursed."  ^  Where- 
upon Nicodemus  made  a  bold  appeal  to 
the  conscience  of  the  Council,  "  Doth  our 
Law  judge  any  man  before  it  first  hear  from 
himself  and  know  what  he  doeth  ? "  His 
question  contains  two  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  Jewish  law. 

L  a.  That  in  a  criminal  case  every 
opportunity  shall  be  given  to 
the  accused  to  speak  for  himself, 
and  to  advance  any  point  he 
can  in  his  own  favour. 

*  John  vii.  47-48. 


I.]        COURAGE   AND   ACUMEN   OF   NICODEMUS     21 

b.  That  anything  said  by  him  during 

the  trial  shall  never  be  used  as 
evidence  against  him,  or  even 
as  tending  to  prejudice  his  case. 

c.  A    criminal    trial    shall    be    opened 

always  with  the  defence,  and 
not  with  the  accusation. 

II.  "To  know  what  he  doeth,"  i.e., 
the  witnesses  themselves  must 
arrest  the  prisoner,  and  formulate 
in  public  and  upon  solemn  oath 
their  reason  for  so  doing.^ 

This  determined  attack  upon  the  liberty 
of  Christ  was  thus  foiled  by  the  courage  of 
that  timid  "ruler  of  the  Jews"  who  first 
came  to  Him  secretly  in  the  dead  of  night. 
It  was  a  masterly  stroke  on  the  part  of 
Nicodemus,  and  that  short  sentence  contains 
the  pith  of  Jewish  criminal  procedure.  In 
a  few  words  he  had  summed  up  the  whole 
digest  of  their  criminal  corpus  juris,  and  no 
member  of  the  Council  could  fail  to  acknow- 
ledge the  cogency  of  that  insistence  upon 
justice. 

Two  attempts  to  take  mob  law  into  their 
own  hands  and  put  Him  to  death  are  now 
^  Mishna,  De  Syn.,  iv. 


22  THE    ARREST  [Lect. 

recorded  against  the  populace.  Speaking 
in  the  treasury  of  the  Temple  a  little  later 
on,  Christ  had  openly  told  them  that  He 
knew  they  sought  to  kill  Him  (John  viii.  ;^y) 
and  rebuked  them  for  not  believing  on 
Him  (v.  40),  adding  that  for  those  who 
kept  His  sayings  there  was  no  death  (v.  51), 
as  before  Abraham  was  I  AM.  Whereupon 
the  people  in  a  paroxysm  of  fury  declared 
Him  to  be  possessed  by  a  demon  (v.  48) 
and  tried  to  stone  Him.  But  He  escaped. 
Again,  a  little  later  on  in  the  winter  time, 
during  the  Feast  of  the  Dedication  which 
took  place  on  Kisleu  25th,  i.e.,  towards  the 
middle  of  December,  they  tried  again  to 
take  Him  up  for  blasphemy.^  Some  of  the 
Jews  urged  Him  to  keep  them  no  longer 
in  suspense,  but  once  and  for  all  to  declare 
Himself  the  Christ,  if  so  He  was.  His 
reply  was  the  claim,  "  I  and  My  Father 
are  one,"  which  so  enraged  them  that  they 
attempted  again  to  stone  Him.  Once  more 
He  escaped  and  went  away  into  the  desert 
country  east  of  the  Jordan,  from  whence 
He  was  only  recalled  by  the  illness  and 
death  of  His  friend  Lazarus.  His  visit  to 
the  bereaved  sisters  brought  Him  back  to 

^  John  X.  22-33. 


I.]  THE    ADVICE    OF    CAIAPHAS  23 

Bethany,  a  village  within  a  stone's-throw 
of  the  Holy  City,  where  His  raising  of 
Lazarus  and  the  consequent  excitement 
among  the  people  seem  to  have  brought 
matters  to  a  climax.  A  council  of  the 
Sanhedrin  ^  was  hastily  called  together,  and 
it  was  resolved  that  this  state  of  popular 
ferment  must  be  put  an  end  to  "lest  the 
Romans  come  and  take  away  our  place 
and  nation."  Whereupon  Caiaphas,  the 
worldly  wise  Sadducee,  the  degenerate  high 
priest  and  the  friend  of  Pontius  Pilate, 
cynically  observed,  "Ye  know  nothing  at 
all ;  it  is  far  wiser  to  take  the  life  of  this 
one  man  who  is  the  cause  of  all  this  trouble 
than  that  a  tumult  arise  which  will  assuredly 
come  to  the  ears  of  the  Procurator,  for 
then  the  Romans  will  come  and  take  away 
our  place  and  nation  ;  better  far  to  sacrifice 
one  life  than  that  the  whole  nation  perish." 
Advice  which  appeared  reasonable  to  his 
colleagues. 

From  that  moment  Christ's  doom  was 
sealed.  An  order  was  issued  that  if  any 
one  knew  where  He  was,  he  was  to  say  so 
that  the. arrest  might  immediately  be  effected. 
Not  only  was   He  to  be  apprehended,  but 

^  John  xi.  47,  crvviSpioi'. 


24  THE    ARREST  [Lect. 

Lazarus  also,  through  whose  influence  many 
were  believing  on  Him.^  So  from  that  day 
forth  "  they  took  counsel  how  they  might 
put  Him  to  death  "  ;  but  He  withdrew  Him- 
self into  the  city  of  Ephraim  in  the  near 
eastern  desert,  and  there  remained  until 
six  days  before  the  Passover. 

Failing  to  capture  Him  at  once,  and  the 
Passover  drawing  nigh,  which  would  un- 
doubtedly bring  many  of  His  friends  and 
disciples  to  Jerusalem,  thus  increasing  their 
difficulties,  the  chief  priests  and  scribes  sent 
forth  spies  to  watch  Christ  and  endeavour  to 
provoke  Him  to  do  or  say  something  that 
might  bring  Him  into  the  hands  of  the 
Roman  governor.  They  selected  for  their 
purpose  the  crucial  question  as  to  whether 
being  Jews  it  was  needful  for  them  to  pay 
tribute  to  Caesar  ;  "  but  they  were  not  able  to 
take  hold"  of  His  answer  before  the  people, 
and  were  once  more  foiled. 

Thus  in  unsuccessful  plotting,  not  now 
against  the  liberty,  but  against  the  very  life  of 
Christ,  the  days  preceding  the  Passover  wore 
away.  They  were  within  two  days  of  the 
Feast,  and  still  the  "  Mesith,"  the  perverter  of 
the  people  was  not  only  at  large,  but  openly 

^  John.  xii.  lo-ii. 


I.]  THE    LEGALITY    OF    THE    MEETING  25 

teaching  in  the  Temple.  In  despair  another 
meeting  was  hastily  called  in  the  palace  of 
the  high  priest,  consisting  of  the  chief  priests, 
elders  of  the  people  and  scribes,^  when  it 
was  agreed  that  for  fear  of  a  popular  rising 
during  the  Feast  in  favour  of  the  Teacher,  He 
must  be  arrested  secretly,  by  craft,  and  at  once 
put  to  death.  All  four  Gospels-  expressly 
state  this,  and  it  seems  as  if  the  difficulties 
in  taking  Him  were  great,  for  finally  Judas, 
one  of  His  own  specially  chosen  apostles 
who  knew  intimately  His  movements  and 
His  habits,  offered  to  betray  Him  to  His 
murderers — and  for  what?  A  paltry  thirty 
shekels  of  silver,  the  price  of  an  adult  slave. 

Now  comes  the  question,  Was  this  meeting 
a  properly  convened  legal  meeting  of  the 
Council  ?  Had  the  scribes,  priests,  and  elders 
of  the  people  the  power  to  arrest  Jesus 
Christ  for  an  anticipated  verdict  ? 

The  writer  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  alone 
mentions  the  Council  at  which  Caiaphas 
urged  the  necessity  for  Christ's  death,  and 
he  uses  the  strictly  technical  term  [avvk^piov) 
for  it.  On  the  other  hand,  not  one  of  the 
Synoptists,  who  all  three  mention  the  gather- 

^  Matt.  xxvi.  3  ;  Mark  xiv.  i  ;  Luke  xxii.  2. 
*  Matt.  xxvi.  4  ;  Mark  xiv.  1-2  ;  Luke  xxii.  2  ;  John  xi.  5. 

D 


26  THE    ARREST  [Lect. 

ing  in  Caiaphas'  house — which  is  omitted  by 
the  writer  of  the  Fourth  Gospel — call  it  by 
any  legal  title.  Yet  this  was  the  meeting 
that  actually  condemned  Him  to  death  before 
arrest.  The  careful  omission  of  any  technical 
name,  and  the  fact  of  the  meeting  being  in 
the  high  priest's  house  and  not  in  "  the  sheds," 
nor  in  the  chamber  called  Gazith,  make  it 
very  doubtful  if  this  was  indeed  a  legally  con- 
stituted meeting  of  the  Sanhedrin,  or  High 
Court  of  Justice,  which  alone  could  issue  an 
order  of  arrest  and  which  required  a  bench 
of  seventy-one  judges  to  consign  the  prisoner 
to  capital  punishment.  "  A  whole  tribe  or  a 
false  prophet  or  a  high  priest,  if  they  have 
to  be  judged  for  a  crime  which  may  bring 
capital  punishment  need  a  court  of  seventy- 
one  judges,"  says  the  Rabbi  Simeon  Ben 
Gamaliel.  And  it  was  for  leading  people 
astray,  for  being  in  fact  a  '*  Mesith  " — a  "  false 
prophet"  that  Jesus  Christ  was  apprehended. 


The  Arrest. 

The  Rulers  of  the  Jews  having  obtained 
the  co-operation  of  Judas  Iscariot,  supplied 
him  with  the  means  of  arresting  Jesus  Christ 


I.]  THE    BAND    AND    OFFICERS  27 

a.  A  orreat  multitude  with  swords  and 

staves.^ 

b.  A  multitude  with  swords  and  staves 

from  the  chief  priests  and  elders.^ 

c.  A  multitude  and  he  that  was  called 

Judas.^ 

d.  A  band  of  soldiers  and  officers  from 

the  chief  priests  and  the  Pharisees. 
T^v  a-Treipav  Kai  vTrtjperai;,'^ 

It  is  only  the  Fourth  Gospel  which  speaks 
of  "the  band"  c-welpav  —  Vulgate  cokors, 
and  the  "chief  captain"  x''^''«PXo? — Vulgate 
tribumis.^ 

Are  we  to  infer  from  the  silence  of  the 
Synoptists  and  this  one  mention  of  the 
military  that  Roman  authority  had  been 
requisitioned  ?  We  read  that  Judas  received 
them  from  the  Jewish  governors,  who  most 
certainly  had  no  power  of  themselves  to  call 
in  the  aid  of  Roman  soldiers  to  arrest  a  man 
upon  whom  they  were  intending  to  pass 
sentence  of  death  for  an  ecclesiastical  offence, 
neither  was  it  the  business  of  the  tribune 
to  accompany  soldiers  upon  a  police  affair, 
neither  does  the  word  a-vreipa  necessarily  imply 

^  Matt.  xxvi.  47.         "  Mark  xiv.  43.         *  Luke  xxii.  47. 
^  John  xviii.  3.  ^  John  xviii.  12. 


28  THE    ARREST  [Lbct. 

a  Roman  armed  band,  nor  is  xihlapxo<i  always 
and  exclusively  used  in  the  technical  sense. 
Judging  from  the  statements  of  the  Synoptists 
I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  "  band  and 
chief  captain "  may  be  taken  to  imply  the 
Temple  police  or  guard  virnpirai  recruited 
from  the  ranks  of  the  Levites,  with  their 
commanding  officer  a-Tparrjyo?.  If  you  accept 
the  terms  crireipai  and  x'^iapx^?  in  their  technical 
sense  you  are  brought  face  to  face  with  the 
ludicrous  spectacle  of  a  dignified  Roman 
tribune  in  all  his  war  panoply  at  the  head  of 
a  cohort  of  six  hundred  men,^  helping  the 
Temple  police  and  a  Jewish  rabble  to  hunt 
by  torchlight  in  a  garden  for  an  unarmed 
and  unresisting  man.  Which  thing  is  in- 
credible. Besides  the  very  last  thing  desired 
by  the  Sadducean  element  would  be  that  at 
the  Passover  time  any  idea  of  a  tumult  in 
Jerusalem  should  come  to  Roman  ears. 

St  Peter's  unwise  and  impulsive  act  would 
have  at  once  resulted  in  his  being  bound  and 
carried  off 'a  prisoner  had  the  *•' band  and 
chief  captain "  been  Roman  officials,  for 
punishment  speedily  followed  resistance  to 
Imperial  Rome. 

^  A  Roman  cohort  consisted  of  three  maniples  each 
containing  two  hundred  men — or  of  six  centuries,  each  century 
consislinL'^  of  one  hundred  men. 


I.]  THE    TEMPLE    GUARD  29 

In  all  probability  "  the  band  "  sent  to  arrest 
Christ  were  the  Shoterim — V7rt]perai — officials 
of  the  same  nature  as  those  who  were  sent 
to  arrest  Him  during  the  Feast  of  Taber- 
nacles.^ Probably  also  they  were  the  same 
force  as  that  which  was  employed  with  "the 
captain — a-rpaTijyo'i — of  the  Temple"  in  appre- 
hending Peter  and  John.^ 

St  Mark  uses  the  word  a-rreipa  ^  when  after 
the  trial  was  over  the  soldiers — crrpaTiwrai — 
led  Him  away  into  the  Prsetorium  and  called 
together  the  whole  band  —  a-ireipa,  Vulgate 
cohors.  The  crTar^wrat  were  undoubtedly  the 
Roman  soldiers,  who  are  not  mentioned  by  St 
Mark  as  having  been  at  the  arrest.  It  does 
not  seem  probable  that  six  hundred  of  them, 
with  their  x'^^apxo? — tribunus  would  have  been 
on  guard  in  the  palace  at  that  early  hour  in 
the  morning,  nor  that  they  would  have  been 
simultaneously  called  together  to  torment  a 
helpless  prisoner.*  It  is  evident  that  the 
"whole  band"  was  already  on  the  spot, 
which  points  to  the  Jewish  Temple  guard 
who  until  now  had  been  responsible  for  the 
custody  of  the  prisoner. 

Had   the    arrest    of    Jesus    Christ    been 

*  John  vii.  32-45.  2  ^^ts  iv.  i  ;  v.  22-26. 

*  Mark  xv.  16.  ■*  Mark  xv.  17-20. 


30  THE    ARREST  [Lect. 

effected  by  the  permission  of  the  Procurator 
and  with  the  aid  of  Roman  soldiers,  there  is 
not  the  slightest  doubt  but  that  He  would 
have  been  "put  in  ward"  in  the  castle  of 
Antonia  until  the  next  day,  and  then  brought 
straio'ht  before  Pilate.^ 


'S3' 


Two  questions  now  confront  us — 

a.  Was  the  arrest  of  Jesus  Christ  legally 

executed  ? 
d.   Had  the  Sanhedrin  of  that  day  the 

right  to  arrest  Him? 

In  connection  with  the  first  question  the 
Mishna  lays  down  the  following  regulations. 

a.  Arrest  before  trial  was  not  permitted 
unless  it  was  practically  certain 
that  either  escape  or  armed  resist- 
ance was  contemplated. 

d.  Arrest  after  sunset  was  illegal. 

^.  It  was  not  lawful  to  bear  arms  at 
the  Passover  time. 

d.  The  witnesses  themselves  must  arrest 
the  accused  and  bring  him  before 
the  court. 

^  See  A.  Loisy  Le  IV"":  Evangile  who  draws   the  same 
conchision  from  a  totally  different  line  of  argument. 


I.]  ILLEGALITY    OF    THE    ARREST  3 1 

e.  Arrest  upon  a  count  that  was  likely 
to  end  in  sentence  of  death  was 
not  permitted  at  Passover  time. 

y[  It  was  illegal  to  arrest  any  man  for 
a  predetermined  conviction. 

Every   one   of   these   regulations   was   con- 
travened. 

Jesus  Christ  was  arrested  for  the  express 
purpose  of  being  put  to  death,  during  the 
night  of  the  14  or  15  Nisan  which  was 
the  Passover  time,  not  by  the  witnesses 
who  would  later  on  be  his  public  accusers, 
but  by  a  band  of  armed  men  to  whom  He 
was  betrayed  by  a  renegade  friend.  He 
was  arrested  by  order  of  the  Sanhedrin, 
not  as  a  preventive  measure  but  as  an 
executive  act. 

The  second  question  is  more  difficult  to 
answer,  as  the  jurists  themselves  are  by 
no  means  all  of  one  mind  upon  the  subject ; 
and  we  shall  have  to  discuss  it  later  on. 
Castelli  ^  and  several  other  writers  main- 
tain that  with  the  conquest  of  Judaea  by 
Rome  there  passed  away  not  only  the  right 

^  Legge  delpopolo  Ebreo^  cap.  viii. 


32  THE    ARREST  [Lect. 

of  the  Jewish  court  to  try  capital  cases, 
but  even  to  arrest  the  criminal. 

On  the  other  hand,  Salvador  and  Momm- 
sen  emphatically  declare  that  the  San- 
hedrin  had  still  the  right  both  of  arrest 
and  trial  for  capital  crimes,  and  could  even 
condemn  the  prisoner  to  death,  but  that 
they  could  no  longer  carry  the  execution 
into  effect,  Rome  as  the  conqueror  reserving 
this  right  always  to  herself. 

At  any  rate  I  think  it  is  quite  clear  that 
the  Sanhedrin  were  within  their  privileges, 
if  not  their  rights,  in  permitting  the  arrest 
of  Jesus  Christ,  as  He  was  accused  of 
purely  ecclesiastical  offences,  and  none  that 
in  any  way  touched  or  even  remotely  con- 
cerned Roman  laws.  But,  as  a  judicial 
body  they  had  no  power  to  arrest  Him. 
It  was  the  duty  of  the  witnesses  who  would 
subsequently  be  His  accusers  in  open  court 
to  do  this,  though  the  Sanhedrin  might 
facilitate  matters  by  granting  the  help  of 
the  Temple  police. 

Having  apprehended  their  prisoner,  the 
legal  duty  of  the  band  was  to  guard  Him 
securely  until  the  Sanhedrin  was  next  in 
session  ;  which,  being  the  eve  of  the  Pass- 


I.]  ABSENCE   OF  THE   DISCIPLES  ^3 

over,  would  not  have  been  until  after  the 
Feast,  the  Octave  and  the  following  Sabbath 
were  over,  thus  postponing  the  trial  for 
nine  days.^  Instead  of  doing  this  they  took 
Him  bound  to  the  palace  of  the  ex-high 
priest  Annas  alone — for  all  His  disciples 
had  fled — but  followed  ultimately  by  that 
one,  who,  knowing  the  high  priest,  went 
in  with  the  officers.  He  was  thus  in  all 
probability  the  only  disciple  present  at  the 
interrogation  by  Annas  and  the  trial  before 
Caiaphas.  The  Synoptists,  not  being  on 
the  spot,  have  only  recorded  what  took 
place  from  hearsay,  and  this  may  account 
for  their  omission  to  mention  the  disciple's 
presence  in  the  court  and  his  obtaining 
permission  for  Peter  to  enter.  St  Mark 
who  probably  gives  St  Peter's  account  of 
the  events  of  that  night,  states  that  Peter 
remained  below  in  the  court  with  the 
servants.^  The  absence  of  the  other  dis- 
ciples will  also  help  to  explain  the  obvious 
discrepancies  and  variations  contained  in 
the  accounts  of  what  took  place  on  that 
fateful  night.  We  are  bound  to  consider 
them  carefully ;  but  they  do  not  any  of 
them  present  insuperable  difficulties.     They 

*  Mishna,  Moed Katon^  xi.  2.  ^  Mark  xiv.  66. 

E 


34  THE   ARREST  [LeCT. 

are  only  such  as  we  might  expect  to  find 
in  four  separate  accounts  of  the  same  events 
written  by  four  different  people  at  various 
intervals  of  time  after  those  events  took 
place,  and  in  three  instances  by  men  who 
were  not  eye  -  witnesses.  Fortunately  the 
most  hopeless  discrepancy  for  us  to  recon- 
cile, viz.,  the  exact  date  of  the  arrest,  trial, 
and  crucifixion,  in  no  way  affects  any  legal 
question,  and  we  are  therefore  not  called 
upon  to  discuss  it. 

To  follow  the  exact  sequence  of  events  is 
a  matter  of  difficulty.  St  John  alone  records 
the  interrogation  by  Annas,^  St  Luke  alone 
mentions  the  transfer  to  Herod, ^  while 
Matthew  and  Mark  relate  that  He  was 
taken  by  night  to  the  palace  of  Caiaphas 
and  there  interrogated  by  the  Council,  who 
produced  false  witnesses  to  bear  testimony 
against  Him.  These  two  latter  Evangelists 
also  state  that  in  the  morning  another  con- 
sultation took  place,  apparently  still  in  the 
high  priest's  house,  but  perhaps  before  a 
larger  number  of  the  chief  priests,  scribes, 
and  elders.^     St  Luke  again  differs  from  them 

^  John  xviii.  13. 
^  Luke  xxiii.  7.  ^  Matt,  xxvii.  i  j  Mark  xv.  i. 


I.]  PECULIARITIES   OF  JEWISH    LAW  35 

all,  by  stating-  simply  "  that  they  brought  Him 
into  the  high  priest's  house,"  and  he  records 
no  trial  before  Caiaphas.  His  account  reads 
as  if  Our  Lord  had  merely  been  detained 
and  tormented  by  the  guard  until  dawn, 
when  He  was  led  away  into  the  Council 
Hall  of  the  Sanhedrin  from  whence  He  was 
taken  to  Pilate.^ 

St  Matthew  alone  mentions  the  dream 
of  Pilate's  wife,  and  the  washing  of  the 
governor's  hands.' 

We  come  now  to  the  record  of  those 
events  in  Our  Lord's  trial,  which  are  in 
direct  conflict  with  Hebrew  law  and  pro- 
cedure, and  concerning  which  much  has  been 
written  by  both  Jewish  and  Christian  writers. 
The  fact  that  the  latter  invariably  approach 
the  question  from  a  Christian  standpoint, 
with  a  veil  of  Roman  law  and  modern  usage 
before  their  eyes,  invalidates  much  that  they 
have  said  upon  the  subject.  On  the  Mishna 
itself  must  lie  the  onus  of  proving  illegality 
and  injustice. 

Jewish  legislature  was  essentially  Oriental, 
peculiar  entirely  to  itself,  and  cannot  be  com- 
pared with  any   modern,   western  code.     It 

1  Luke  xxii.  54  ;  xxiii.  i.  ^  Matt,  xxvii.  19-24. 


36  THE  ARREST  [Lect. 

was  made  for  a  theocratic  commonwealth  of 
pastoral  people,  in  which  the  life  of  each 
individual  was  most  carefully  guarded. 

Roman  law  had  its  foundation  in  a  western, 
military  system  controlled  by  the  Imperator, 
who  was  at  once  commander-in-chief,  high 
priest,  and  chief  judge. 

Christian  lawyers  who  have  written  upon 
the  subject  have  invariably  annulled  the  value 
of  their  writings,  by  endeavouring  to  prove 
that  the  Sanhedrin  had  no  legal  right  to  do 
this  or  that  or  the  other,  because  it  was  not 
the  course  which  they  consider  legal,  and 
quote  the  principles  of  Roman  law  to  back 
up  their  dicta.  A  method  which  seems  to 
be  wholly  wanting  in  common-sense. 

To  understand  Hebrew  law  and  its 
methods,  we  must  consult  those  learned 
Jewish  Rabbis  and  lawyers  who  have  given 
their  time  and  attention  to  elucidating  and 
explaining  their  own  legal  code.  Foremost 
among  modern  jurists  stands  Salvador,  a 
learned  Spanish  Jew,  whose  history  of  the 
Mosaic  institutions  is  an  European  classic, 
and  who  devoted  years  to  the  study  and 
exposition  of  the  Talmud. 

Maimonides,  Mommsen,  and  Rabbinowicz 
among  many  others  have  written  learnedly 


I.]  DECISION   BY  THE   MISHNA  37 

and  thoughtfully  upon  the  same  subject. 
Therefore  by  following  the  Mishna  itself 
and  the  aforesaid  scholars'  commentaries 
upon  it  we  are  more  likely  to  obtain  a 
right  view  of  the  complicated  questions  that 
will  confront  us. 

Would  you  go  to  a  Muhammedan  ulema  to 
ask  for  an  explanation  of  Christian  doctrine  ? 
Then  why  consult  a  modern  European  and 
Christian  lawyer  upon  questions  of  ancient 
and  Jewish  law  ?  The  last  book  of  any 
importance  that  has  been  written  upon  the 
subject  and  which  created  some  stir  on  its 
publication,  was  Rosadi's  II processo  di  Gesti, 
the  work  of  a  brilliant  Tuscan  advocate  ;  but 
it  is  inaccurate  and  misleading,  chiefly  because 
— misstatements  apart,  of  which  there  are 
many  —  he  applies  ancient  Roman  law  as 
exemplified  in  modern  Italian  procedure  to 
a  Jewish  trial  that  took  place  nineteen 
hundred  years  ago.  Where  the  two  different 
legal  systems  do  not  coincide  he  emphati- 
cally denounces  the  Sanhedrin  as  in  the 
wrong,  denying  them  even  the  right  to  try 
an  ecclesiastical  offender.  Undoubtedly  the 
rulers  of  the  Jews  conducted  the  trial  with 
serious  forms  of  illegality ;  but  the  Mishna 
and  not  the   Pandects    of    Justinian,    must 


38  THE   ARREST  [Lect. 

show    cause    where   justice   was   not    done, 
and  murder  committed. 


The   Talmud. 

We  will  now  turn  to  the  Talmud,  that 
"encyclopaedia  of  all  law,"  as  it  has  been 
called,  and  see  by  what  legal  process  the 
Council  had  power  thus  arbitrarily  to  order 
the  arrest  of  the  Teacher,  having  already 
prejudged  and  condemned  Him. 

"The  word  Talmud  means  literally  a 
'teaching,'  an  'inference,'  or  a  'doctrine.' 
It  is  a  collection  of  works  embodying  the 
oral  law  of  the  Hebrews."  The  Jews 
declare  that  "Moses  received  Torah  —  or 
Law — (which  includes  the  Pentateuch  and 
the  oral  teaching)  from  Sinai,  delivered  it 
to  Joshua,  Joshua  to  the  elders,  and  the 
elders  to  the  prophets.  The  prophets 
delivered  it  to  the  men  of  the  Great 
Synagogue*" ;  these  last  being  the  most 
important  teachers,  of  whom  a  list  of  pairs 
is  given  reaching  down  to  Hillel  and 
Shammai,  who  lived  in  the  early  days  of 
Christ.^     It  was  supposed  to  be  based  upon 

^  Mishna,  Pirke  Avoth,  i.  b. 


I.]  DIVISIONS   OF  THE   MISHNA  39 

the  Skema  or  Jewish  profession  of  faith  that 
was  recited  twice  daily  by  every  pious  Jew. 
As  time  went  on  it  gradually  became  orally 
expanded   into   such   a  vast  compilation  of 
legal    enactments    and    quibbles,     traditions 
and  usages,  discussions  and  decisions,  com- 
mentaries and  illustrations,  that  at  last  it  was 
absolutely  chaotic  ;   all  the  more  so  that  it 
was  looked  upon  as   a    religious  offence  to 
codify  it  in  writing.     It  contains  many  other 
things    besides    law,    but    out   of  the    forty 
volumes   of  the  Talmud,   by  far  the   oldest 
are    the    twelve    volumes    of  law,  pure  and 
simple,  called  the  Mishna,  i.e.,   the   Repeti- 
tion.      "The    Mishna    is    divided    into   six 
sections   termed    Sedarim.     Each    Seder    is 
divided   into  Masechtoth  or  treatises.     Each 
Masechta  is  again  subdivided  into  chapters 
called    Perakim.      The    Masechta    entitled 
'  Sanhedrin '    is    the  fourth    treatise   of  the 
Seder  or  section  termed  Nezikin,  or  damages 
which  embraces  a  great  part  of  the  civil  and 
criminal  law."^     In   particular    it    gives   the 
scope  and  composition  of  the    Sanhedrin — 
the    Jewish    High    Court    of   Justice  —  the 
methods  of  procedure  in  trials,  and  the  laws 
concerning    the    examination    of  witnesses, 

'  Mielziner. 


40  THE   ARREST  [Lect. 

capital  punishment,  and  "forty  stripes  save 
one."  It  decrees  how  oaths  —  both  those 
taken  in  private  and  openly  in  court — are 
to  be  administered,  and  it  defines  the  law 
of  evidences. 

This  legal  code  which  professed  to  be 
based  upon  the  Mosaic  law  began,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  to  supersede  it  after  the 
return  from  the  captivity  and  the  establish- 
ment of  local  synagogues.  During  the 
period  of  the  Second  Temple  it  was  con- 
tinually enlarged ;  commentaries  were  made 
upon  it,  and  commentaries  again  upon 
those  commentaries  until  about  the  second 
century  a.d.,  when  the  original  law  bade  fair 
to  be  entirely  lost  in  minute  and  detailed 
dissertations.  Thus  from  the  days  of  the 
return  from  Babylon  this  oral  law  had 
been  gradually  accumulating,  and  the  trend 
of  the  Mishna  in  each  succeeding  genera- 
tion had  been  to  multiply  precautions  against 
any  possibility  of  injustice  towards,  or  negli- 
gence of,  the  interests  of  the  prisoner.  Its 
great  object  was  to  ensure  for  every  one, 
however  lowly  his  station,  full  publicity  in 
any  trial  which  might  end  in  capital  punish- 
ment.^ In  this  respect  one  might  almost 
^  Mishna,  Cap.  Pairum,  i.  b. 


I.]  THE   WORK   OF  THE   RABBIS  41 

describe  Jewish  law  as  caution  run  mad. 
"  Be  cautious  and  slow  in  judgment,  raise  up 
many  disciples,  and  make  a  fence  round  the 
law,"  was  a  favourite  axiom  of  the  Rabbis. 

The  learned  Hillel,  who  presided  over  the 
Sanhedrin  during  the  reign  of  Herod  the 
Great,  was  the  first  who  attempted  to  reduce 
this  legal  chaos  to  order,  and  arranged  the 
Mishna  into  six  divisions.  Then  followed 
in  the  second  century,  a.d.,  the  Rabbi  Akiba, 
who  took  out  all  the  subject  matter  of  those 
six  divisions,  arranging  them  under  their 
correct  headings,  and  tabulating  them.  The 
Rabbi  Meir,  a  disciple  of  Akiba,  continued 
his  master's  work,  and  may  be  said  to  have 
finally  arranged  the  law.  In  the  beginning 
of  the  third  century,  a.d.,  came  the  Rabbi 
Jehuda  Hannasi,  a  very  wealthy  and  learned 
Jew  of  irreproachable  life,  and  a  great  friend 
of  the  Roman  authorities.  He  was  the  head 
of  one  of  the  Palestinian  Academies  founded 
for  the  express  purpose  of  studying  and 
handing  down  legal  tradition,  and  with  a 
band  of  devoted  disciples  gave  up  his  time 
and  wealth  to  codifying  and  setting  down 
the  oral  law  in  writing.  Many  of  his 
opinions  were  based  upon  those  of  his  great 
predecessors — Hillel  and  the  two  Gamaliels. 

F 


42  THE   ARREST  [Lect. 

In  the  century  immediately  before  Christ 
schools  were  established  under  Tannaim  or 
teachers,  for  the  express  purpose  of  explain- 
ing the  law,  and  instructing  children  in  it. 
Although  the  Mishna  had  not  been  reduced 
to  writing  at  the  time  of  Christ's  trial, 
Jewish  writers  generally  concur  in  admitting 
that  the  criminal  code  there  enunciated  was 
the  same  as  that  in  use  in  the  days  of 
Caiaphas. 

The  Jewish  Church  considered  the  Law 
to  be  more  inspired  than  the  rest  of  their 
sacred  books,  and  a  vast  amount  of  time 
was  spent  in  trying  to  squeeze  cryptic  and 
allegorical  meanings  out  of  even  the  plainest 
directions,  these  being  applied  equally  to  the 
greatest  emergencies  or  the  most  trifiing 
details  of  everyday  life.  Thus  at  the  date 
when  Christ  was  brought  to  trial  for  "  pervert- 
ing the  nation,"  the  life  of  a  Hebrew  was  so 
carefully  hedged  round,  so  marvellous  and 
intricate  were  the  precautions  and  the  legal 
quibbles,  so  many  gnats  were  strained  out 
and  so  many  camels  swallowed  whole,  that 
capital  punishment  was  almost  an  impossi- 
bility. The  old  Rabbi  Meir  writes  :  "  What 
doth  God  say — if  one  may  speak  after  the 
manner  of  men  of  God — when  the  malefactor 


I.]      ABHORRENCE  OF  DEATH  PENALTY     43 

suffers  the  anguish  of  his  crime  ?  He  says  : 
*  My  head  and  my  Hmbs  are  pained ' ;  and  if 
He  so  speaks  of  the  guilty,  what  must  He 
utter  when  the  righteous  is  condemned  ? "  ^ 

Eleazar,  the  son  of  Azarias,  maintains  that 
the  Sanhedrin,  which  once  in  seventy  years 
condemns  a  man  to  death,  is  a  slaughter- 
house ;  ^  and  the  two  Rabbis,  Akiba  and  Tar- 
phon  go  even  further,  and  declare  that  if 
only  they  were  members  of  the  Sanhedrin, 
no  one  should  ever  suffer  the  death  sentence, 
to  which  sentiment  Simeon,  the  son  of 
Gamaliel  retorts  that,  "such  scholars  would 
only  increase  bloodshed  in  Israel."^ 


The  Sanhedrin. 

The  whole  underlying  principle  of  Jewish 
legal  procedure  at  this  period  tended  towards 
the  multiplication  of  precautions  against  any 
possible  miscarriage  of  justice.  To  carry 
these  out  effectually  it  was  decreed  that  no 
one  man  should  ever  judge  a  cause  "  Be  not 
a  sole  judge;  there  is  no  sole  judge  but  One."* 

From  Deut.  xvi.  18-20,  it  is  clear  that  so 

^  Mishna,  De  Syn,  vi.  5.  -  Ibid.,  Makhoth. 

^  Ibid.,  Makhoth  Stripes.         *  Ibid.,  Pirke  Avoth^  iv.  8. 


44  THE   ARREST  [Lect. 

far  back  as  pre-exilic  days  there  was  some 
organised  method  of  judging  the  people  with 
righteous  judgment.  It  was  probably  carried 
out  then  by  means  of  a  Council  of  the  heads 
of  the  tribes,  which  as  time  went  on  developed 
into  the  central  and  local  Courts  of  Justice 
known  as  the  Great  Sanhedrin  and  the  Minor 
Sanhedrins.  These  latter  were  established 
in  towns  of  not  less  than  one  hundred  and 
twenty  adult  males,  and  were  composed  of 
twenty-three  members,  both  priests  and  lay- 
men, although  in  order  to  form  a  Sanhedrin 
the  Council  need  not  necessarily  contain  a 
priestly  member.^ 

The  Great  Sanhedrin  crweSpiov  was  "  the 
highest  Court  of  Justice  and  Supreme 
Council  "  in  Jewry,  and  sat  in  Jerusalem  itself. 
It  received  its  Greek  title  in  the  second 
century,  b.c,  and  was  probably  the  descendant 
of  the  great  assembly  of  the  elders  convened 
by  Nehemiah  and  Ezra  after  the  return  from 
the  captivity.^ 

It  was  entirely  reconstituted  after  the  fall 
of  Jerusalem,  first  at  Jamnia  and  then  at 
Tiberias.     This  court  was  evidently  looked 

^  De  Sytiy  i.  par  6 ;  x.  par  2.    Mommsen's  Lesprov.  Rom.^  xi. 

479-503. 

*  Nehemiah  viii.  10. 


I.]  THE   SANHEDRIN  45 

Upon  by  Christ,  who  speaks  of  it  as  judging 
capital  offences/  as  the  supreme  tribunal  in 
His  day. 

Two  maxims  were  supposed  to  regulate 
the  deliberation  of  its  judges. 

a.  Thou  shalt  do  no  unrighteousness  in 

judgment. 

b.  Be  cautious  and  slow  in  judgment. 

The  members  were  called  Elders,  and 
are  often  alluded  to  in  the  Gospels ;  and 
in  Christ's  time  these  elders  were  chiefly 
recruited  from  the  ranks  of  the  Sadducees. 
There  were  various  methods  of  election  to 
the  Great  Sanhedrin  prevailing  at  different 
periods  of  history  ;  but  at  that  with  which  we 
are  dealing  any  Jew  who  was  well  versed 
in  Law  and  Tradition,  and  had  publicly 
distinguished  himself  as  a  judge  in  his  own 
locality,  might  become  first  a  member  of 
one  of  the  two  lesser  Synedria  in  Jerusalem, 
afterwards  rising  to  be  an  elder  of  the  Great 
Sanhedrin,  which  was  the  highest  dignity  a 
judge  could  attain.^  Besides  legal  ability  the 
personal  qualifications  that  were  theoretically 
required  were  so  exacting  that  it  is  wonderful 

>  Matt.  V.  21. 

"^  ]o%€  ben  Chalaftha  \  Tosefta,  Shekalitn. 


46  THE   ARREST  [Lect. 

that  any  human  being  was  found  worthy  to 
sit  in  that  magic  semicircle. 

In  order  to  be  elected  the  candidate  must 
be  a  man  of  good  birth  ;  tall,  strong,  and  in 
good  health  ;  married,  and  the  father  of  a 
family.  He  must  be  venerable,  though  not 
too  advanced  in  years,  dignified  in  bearing, 
and  of  good  courage.  He  was  required  to 
be  deeply  learned,  yet  modest  withal,  able 
to  speak  in  foreign  tongues  (Aramaic,  Greek, 
and  Latin),  and  he  must  have  been  initiated 
into  the  mysteries  of  Egyptian  magic.  It 
was  also  necessary  that  he  should  be  held  in 
good  repute  by  his  fellow-men,  and  be  wealthy 
besides,  so  as  to  be  above  suspicion  of  taking 
bribes.  Any  man  who  was  blind,  a  dice 
player,  or  a  fowler,  was  not  eligible  for  office. 

This  legal  senate  consisted  of  seventy-one 
judges.  To  assist  them  in  their  labours  and 
adjudicate  in  minor  causes  were  two  courts, 
each  one  composed  of  twenty-three  judges, 
known  as  the  Lesser  Sanhedrins. 

Presiding  over  the  Great  Sanhedrin  was 
"the  Father  of  the  House  of  Justice,"^ 
the  high  priest  being  only  an  ex-officio 
President,  except  in  ecclesiastical  cases 
when   he   was   de  facto    President.^      This 

1   Voma,  vii.  5.  ^  Tosefta,  Fesac/ii'm,  iv. 


I.]  COMPOSITION   OF  THE   COURT  47 

accounts  for  the  prominent  part  taken  by 
Caiaphas  at  our  Lord's  trial,  as  in  His  time 
Hillel  and  Simon  his  son  were  respectively 
President  and  Vice-President,  though  there 
are  some  scholars  who  think  that  Gamaliel  I,, 
the  son  of  Simon  ben  Hillel,  and  the  teacher 
of  Saul  of  Tarsus,  was  President  at  that 
date. 

Apparently  the  number  of  judges  required 
to  form  a  full  court  differed  according  to  the 
gravity  of  the  crime  ;  ^  for  we  read  :  "  To 
decide  upon  the  following  cases  three  persons 
are  needed — civil  cases,  robbery,  wounds, 
damaofes,  and  half  damao-es.  The  same 
number  are  also  required  in  the  case  of 
libel,"  etc.  (Deut.  xxii.  19);  though  some 
of  the  Talmudists  declare  that  for  libel 
twenty-three  are  needed,  as  libel  might 
entail  capital  punishment. 

"A  whole  tribe,  or  a  false  prophet,  or  a 
high  priest,  if  they  have  to  be  judged  for  a 
crime  which  may  bring  capital  punishment, 
shall  be  judged  by  a  court  of  seventy-one 
judges,  of  whom  there  must  never  be  fewer 
than  twenty-three  on  the  bench  during  the 

'  In  matters  concerning  the  composition  and  functions 
of  the  Sanhedrin,  Jose  ben  Chalaftha,  a  well-known  and 
learned  Jewish  historical  writer  and  Talmudist,  is  safer  to 
follow  than  Josephus. 


48  THE   ARREST  [Lbct. 

whole  trial.  If  any  man  require  to  go  out 
in  order  to  do  his  business,  let  him  look 
round  to  see  if  his  colleagues  be  twenty- 
three.  If  they  be,  let  him  go ;  if  not,  let 
him  wait  until  another  enter  in."^ 

The  Mishna  gives  us  the  reason  for  these 
particular  numbers. 

"  Whence  do  we  deduce  that  the  Great 
Sanhedrin  must  be  seventy-one? 

"  From  '  Gather  unto  me  seventy  men ' 
(Numbers  xi.  16),  and  add  Moses,  who  was 
the  head  of  them — hence  seventy-one. 

"And  whence  do  we  deduce  that  a  small 
Sanhedrin  must  be  twenty-three  ? 

"  From  '  the  congregation  shall  judge '  and 
'the  congregation  shall  save,'"  we  see  that 
one  congregation  judges  and  the  other  con- 
gregation saves — hence  there  are  twenty,  as 
a  congregation  consists  of  not  less  than  ten 
personages. 

"  Whence  do  we  deduce  that  three  more 
are  needed  ? 

"  From*'  Thou  shalt  not  follow  a  multitude 
to  do  evil ' ;  ^  from  which  we  may  infer  that 
thou  shalt  follow  them  to  do  well. 

"  But  if  so,  why  is  it  written  at  the  end  of 

'  Mishna,  De  Syn^  i ;  Lightfoot,  Hor.  Heb.^  ii.  462. 
'  Numbers  xxxv.  24-25.  '  Exodus  xxiii.  2. 


L]  TIME   OF   SESSION  49 

the  same  verse  :   '  Incline  after  the  majority 
to  wrest  judgment  ? ' 

"  This  means  that  the  inclination  to  free 
the  man  must  not  be  similar  to  the  influence 
to  condemn,  as  to  condemn  a  majority  of 
two  is  needed,  while  to  free  a  majority  of 
one  suffices.  And  a  court  must  not  consist 
of  an  even  number,  as  if  their  opinion  is 
halved  no  verdict  can  be  established  ;  there- 
fore one  more  must  be  added.  Hence  it  is 
twenty-three."  ^ 

A  certain  number  of  students  were 
attached  to  the  Sanhedrin  courts  for  the 
purpose  of  acquiring  knowledge  of  law  and 
procedure.  Two  scribes,  doctors  of  the  law, 
sat  at  a  table  to  record  the  proceedings  and 
sentence,  and  two  officers — members  of  the 
Temple  police  called  Shoterim — guarded  the 
prisoner  in  court. ^ 

According  to  Jos6  ben  Chalaftha,  "the 
judges  sat  from  the  offering  of  the  morning 
until  the  offering  of  the  evening  sacrifice ; 
but  not  on  the  Sabbath  day,  nor  on  feast 
days,  nor  in  the  Passover  week."  When  in 
court  they  arranged  themselves  in  a  half 
circle,  so  that  each  man's  face  was  visible  to 

^  Mishna,  De  Syn.^  cap.  i. 

2  De  Syn.y  iii. ;  Maimonides,  De  Syn.^  i.  3  ;  Haghighk,  16. 

G 


50  THE    ARREST  [Lect. 

all  his  colleagues.  In  the  centre  was  the 
President,  with  the  Vice-President  and  the 
High  Priest  on  either  hand  ;  the  rest  of  the 
Council  were  placed  in  the  order  of  their 
seniority,  the  youngest  members  being  at 
the  outsides.  Judgment  usually  went  by  the 
voting  of  the  members.  "In  questions  of 
civil  law  and  in  those  affecting  ecclesiastical 
and  ceremonial  law,  the  taking  of  the  vote 
began  with  the  principal  member  of  the 
Sanhedrin  ;  in  judgments  of  life  and  death, 
at  the  side — the  younger  ones  thus  voting 
first  so  as  not  to  be  influenced  in  any  degree 
by  their  seniors."  ^ 

From  the  Great  Sanhedrin  in  Jerusalem 
"went  forth  direction  for  all  Israel,"  and 
their  decisions  were  binding  upon  all  other 
synedria,  doctors,  and  teachers.  It  was  the 
Jewish  High  Court  of  Appeal  as  well,  and 
it  was  the  only  law  court  competent  to  judge 
certain  cases — eight  in  number.- 

The  judges  assembled  in  the  Lishcath  ha 
Gazitk,  or  Hall  of  Hewn  Stones,  within  the 
Temple  area,  situated  on  the  south  side. 
The  Lesser  Sanhedrins  sat  respectively  in 
the  "entrance  to  the  Temple  mount,"  and 
the  "  entrance  of  the  Temple  court."  ^ 

^  De  Syn.y  iv.  2  ;  Tosefta,  San,  vii.  2.        ^  De  Sjn.,  i.  5. 
*  De  Syn.,  i.  6  ;  Middoth,  v.  2. 


I.]  RISE   OF  THE   PHARISEES  51 

When  under  the  first  Roman  governor 
the  Jewish  nation  was  deprived  of  the  power 
of  carrying  out  the  death  sentence,  the 
sessions  were  removed  to  "the  Sheds,"  or 
"  Bazars  of  the  sons  of  Annas,"  which  were 
in  an  outer  court  of  the  Temple,  and  were 
probably  part  of  the  market  where  people 
bought  and  sold  doves,  and  the  money- 
changers set  up  their  tables.  "  Forty  years 
before  the  Temple  was  destroyed  judgment 
in  capital  cases  was  taken  away  from  Israel, 
and  the  Council  removed,  and  sat  in  the 
sheds."  1 

The  Sanhedrin  of  Christ's  day,  apart 
from  the  purely  priestly  members,  included 
Pharisees,  Sadducees,  and  scribes  —  three 
factions  with   distinctly  conflicting  interests. 


The  Pharisees. 

The  Pharisees,  i.e.,  "the  separated  ones," 
became  a  distinctive  set  in  the  second 
century,  B.C.,  when  in  the  days  of  Antiochus 
Epiphanes  there  arose  a  strong  Hellenising 
party  in  Palestine,  Simon,  a  "guardian"  of 
the  Temple,  giving  Onias  III.  the  high 
*  Babylonian  Talmud,  Aboda  Zara^  8  b,  f  8. 


52  THE   ARREST  [Lect. 

priest  much  trouble  on  this  score.^  This 
movement  spread  rapidly  among  the  priestly 
aristocracy,  and  even  many  of  the  lower 
orders,  both  of  priests  and  people,  appear  to 
have  joined  it.  To  combat  this  national 
danger  the  Hasidean  party  was  formed, 
who  resolved  to  leave  no  stone  unturned 
to  enforce  in  its  utmost  strictness  every  jot 
and  tittle  of  the  Law.  The  Hasideans  and 
the  Hellenisers  soon  came  into  opposition, 
and  may  thus  be  said  to  be,  in  a  sense,  the 
precursors  of  the  Pharisees  and  Sadducees. 
The  one  set  being  distinctly  a  religious  sect, 
the  other  a  political  party ;  although  when 
the  Jews  lost  their  national  independence 
the  Sadducees  naturally  became  less  political, 
and  came  to  be  looked  upon  more  in  the 
light  of  a  religious  body. 

Being  religious  and  not  political,  the 
Pharisees  survived  the  destruction  of 
Jerusalem,  when  their  leaders  under  the 
Rabbi  Hillel  settled  down  first  at  Jamnia 
and  then  at  Tiberias.  Separating  them- 
selves as  much  as  they  could  from  all  inter- 
course with  either  Gentiles  or  Christians, 
and  enforcing  more  rigorously  than  ever 
the  letter  of  the  law,  they  became  at  last 
^  Maccabees,  iii.  ;  iv.  6, 


I.]  PHARISEES'  VIEW   OF   LIFE  53 

a  sect  of  Judaic  priests  and  fanatics,  whose 
lives  were  one  long  spiritual  slavery.  In 
Christ's  day  they  were  partly  a  legal,  partly 
a  religious  body,  holding  vehemently  "the 
tradition  of  the  elders,"  and  were  both 
narrow-minded  and  hypocritical.  They  were, 
in  fact,  at  that  time,  the  Puritans  of  the 
Jewish  Church.  Josephus  says  that  they 
taught  the  doctrine  of  the  immortality  of 
the  soul,  and  believed  future  rewards  and 
punishments  to  be  consequent  upon  earthly 
conduct.  He  also  states  that  they  averred 
that  some  things  in  life  were  the  result  of 
"  Fate,"  and  impossible  to  control,  while 
with  regard  to  other  matters,  man  had  the 
power  of  choosing  what  he  would  or  would 
not  do.  Theirs  was,  in  fact,  a  convenient 
doctrine  of  limited  Freewill.  They,  with 
their  strict  observance  of  the  Levitical  law, 
came  early  into  collision  with  Christ. 

According  to  their  views  He  was  under- 
mining that  which  they  spent  their  whole 
lives  in  trying  to  enforce,  and  was  practically 
proclaiming  that  the  greater  number  of  their 
most  dearly  loved  regulations  were  unneces- 
sary. They  looked  forward  to  the  establish- 
ment of  an  ideal  Jewish  kingdom  upon  earth 
by  one  of  the  line  of  David,   in  which  the 


54  THE   ARREST  [Lect. 

Levitical  law,  as  taught  by  them,  should 
be  kept  In  every  little  detail.  Until  that 
blessed  time  came  they  must  endure  the 
chastening  of  the  Lord  in  the  shape  of 
foreign  rule,  as  a  punishment  for  their 
sins. 

It  must  also  be  remembered  that  they 
were  always  stirring  up  the  populace  against 
the  Roman  power.  They  refused  to  take 
the  oath  of  allegiance  to  Caesar,  and  they 
haggled  over  paying  the  Imperial  taxes. ^ 
Against  Pharasaic  formalism  and  tyranny 
Christ  strenuously  set  His  face — pleading  for 
justice,  mercy,  and  the  love  of  God,  instead 
of  the  strict  tithing  of  mint  and  annise  and 
cummin. 


The  Sadducees. 

The  Sadducees  were  the  followers  of  the 
above-mentioned  Hellenisers,  and  became 
a  very  strong  political  faction ;  so  much  so 
that  in  the  time  of  Herod  they  formed  the 
preponderating  influence  in  the  Sanhedrin, 
even  the  high  priests  for  several  generations 
being  drawn  from  their  ranks. 

^  jostphus,  Aniig,,  x. ;  xv.  4. 


I.]  POWER   OF  THE   SADDUCEES  55 

As  a  class  they  were  enormously  wealthy, 
and  consequently  very  powerful.  They 
were  political  aristocrats,  in  contrast  to  the 
Pharisees  who  were  religious  democrats, 
and  who  considered  them  very  lax,  not  to 
say  godless. 

In  B.C.  37  Herod  put  forty-five  Sadducean 
members  of  the  Sanhedrin  to  death  on 
account  of  their  outrageous  lawlessness,^ 
while  he  left  the  Pharisees  untouched  as 
they  had  great  influence  over  the  people, 
and  also  because  at  that  moment,  as  there 
was  no  help  for  it,  they  had  not  openly 
opposed  the  Romans,  arguing  that  they  (the 
Romans)  were  Jehovah's  curse  upon  the 
nation  for  their  evil  doings.  Archelaus, 
Herod's  successor,  wisely  left  the  municipal 
and  religious  affairs  of  Judaea  in  the  hands 
of  the  Jews,  which  meant  that  the  power  of 
the  Sanhedrin  became  paramount  on  those 
questions,  and  consequently  strengthened 
the  influence  of  the  Sadducees.  It  was, 
however,  to  the  Pharisees  in  the  Council 
that  the  people  looked  for  religious  direc- 
tion, and  as  late  as  the  reign  of  Agrippa  I. 
they  were  offering  the  daily  sacrifice,  and 
practising  the  Law. 

^  Josephus,  Atttiq.,  xvi.  2. 


56  THE   ARREST  [LecT. 

When  Jerusalem  fell,  the  high  priestly 
office  passed  away  for  ever,  and  with  the 
priesthood  was  swept  away  the  Sadducean 
party. 

The  ideal  of  the  Sadducees  was  to  form 
a  Jewish  state  in  amity  with  Rome,  in 
which  they  might  live  comfortably,  not  to 
say  luxuriously.  They  were  thus  diametri- 
cally opposed  to  the  Pharisees,  with  whom 
they  first  came  into  collision  in  the  reign 
of  John  Hyrcanus.  In  religious  matters 
they  declined  to  consider  the  oral  law  as 
binding,  though  they  accepted  the  written 
law.  They  were  very  severe  in  carry- 
ing" out  the  Lex  talionis,  and  were  harsh 
judges  in  the  Sanhedrin  trials,  except  in  the 
matter  of  punishing  false  witnesses,  in  which 
the  Pharisees  were  even  sterner  judges. 
Although  numerically  they  formed  a  strong 
majority,  they  practically  had  no  influence, 
either  secular  or  religious,  upon  their 
compatriots. 

Josephus'says  that  the  Sadducees  denied 
the  resurrection  of  the  body,  and  thought 
the  soul  died  with  it,  which  belief,  of  course, 
includes  the  denial  of  future  rewards  and 
punishments.  Acts  xxiii.  8  says  they 
believed     in     neither     angels     nor     spirits. 


I,]  THE   SCRIBES  57 

They  considered  man  to  be  absolutely  a 
free  agent  and  complete  master  of  his  own 
destiny,  in  contra-distinction  to  the  Pharisees, 
who  believed  in  a  mixture  of  Fate,  God 
and  Freewill.  As  Wellhausen  has  pointed 
out,  they  were  entirely  dependent  upon  their 
own  resources  ;  they  claimed  nothing  from 
God,  nor  He  from  them. 

Only  at  the  end  of  Christ's  ministry  do 
we  find  them  coming  into  direct  collision 
with  Him,  when  He  interfered,  as  they  con- 
sidered, with  their  privileges,  so  they  joined 
the  Pharisees  against  Him,  and  being  friends 
of  Pilate,  tried  to  prove  His  disloyalty  to 
Rome.  Probably  they  formed  a  strong  con- 
demning party  in  the  Sanhedrin,  as  they 
lived  in  a  state  of  perpetual  panic  for  fear 
of  "political  consequences." 

The  writer  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  never 
mentions  them  by  name,  although  the  term 
"  chief  priests  "  must  of  course  include  them. 


The  Scribes. 

The  scribes  or  Sopherim  of  Christ's  day 
were  practically  jurists,  many  of  them  were 
Pharisees,  and  none  of  them  had  any  political 

H 


58  THE   ARREST  [LkcT. 

influence.     Their  great  ambition  was  to  gain 
honour  in  the  Temple  and  the  synagogues, 
and  admiration  from  their  students. 
Their  chief  functions  were  : 

a.  To  develop  the  law. 

b.  To  teach  the  law. 

c.  "To  act  as  judges  in  the  Sanhedrin, 

and  in  the  local  courts." 

Not  only  were  they  required  to  expound 
the  Law  and  oral  tradition,  but  they  were 
expected  also  to  spend  time  in  imagining 
possible  difficult  cases  which  might  arise, 
and  arrange  how  they  should  be  met.  Thus 
they  overburdened  themselves  and  their 
pupils  with  a  mass  of  legal  traditions, 
quibbles,  and  regulations,  which  called  forth 
our  Lord's  sternest  condemnation.  Dr 
Eaton  has  shown  how  they  reduced  piety 
to  formalism,  leaving  no  room  for  spontaneous 
devotion  and  warm-hearted  religion.  *'  Life 
under  the  Law  was  felt  to  be  a  heavy  burden, 
and  the  scribes  themselves  had  to  devise 
methods  whereby  to  evade  some  of  their 
own  precepts.^  Instead  of  proving  a  help 
to  men  in  their  moral  and  religious  life,  the 

^  Matt,  xxiii.  i6  ;  Luke  xi.  46. 


1.]  FUNCTIONS   OF  THE  SCRIBES  59 

Law  had  become  a  means  whereby  access  to 
God  was  cut  off."^ 

In  order  to  "raise  up  many  disciples," 
their  one  endeavour  was  to  gather  round 
them  as  many  of  the  Jewish  youth  as 
possible,  propounding  to  them  difficult  and 
intricate  legal  quibbles,  and  disputing  with 
them  upon  points  of  doctrine.  The  primary 
duty  of  the  pupils  was  to  train  their 
memories  to  be  retentive,  never  to  teach 
anything  other  than  what  their  masters  had 
previously  taught  to  them,  and  to  "be  quick 
to  hear  and  slow  to  forget."  ^  Tradition  was 
their  fetish  —  so  much  so  that  of  Eliezer 
ben  Hyrcanus  it  was  said  that  he  was  "  a 
plastered  cistern  that  loseth  not  a  drop." 
The  scribes  were  supposed  to  teach  gratis, 
and  make  their  living  by  other  means  than 
the  law,  although  there  are  many  scholars 
who  think  that  at  this  period  they  were 
paid ;  and  there  are  passages  in  the  Gospels 
which  give  weight  to  this  opinion.^     "Who- 


^  Luke  xi.  52. 

^  "  He  who  teaches  against  the  Pentateuch  is  not  con- 
demned to  death,  for  all  men  know  the  Bible  ;  but  if  he 
teaches  anything  against  the  doctors  he  is  condemned." — 
Rabbinowicz,  Legislation  criminelle  du  Talmud. 

*  Matt.  X.  10  ;  Mark  xii.  40  ;  Luke  x.  7  ;  xvi.  40  ;  xx.  47. 


6o  THE   ARREST  [Lect  f. 

soever  makes  profit  from  the  words  of  Torah 
(Law)  removes  his  life  from  this  world."  ^ 

From  the  composition  of  the  court  is  it 
reasonable  to  think  that  the  judges  would 
try  a  "  Mesith,"  that  is,  a  "perverter"  or 
"seductor"  of  the  people,  or  a  case  of 
blasphemy  and  sedition  —  especially  where 
the  element  of  personal  dislike  formed  a 
strong  factor — with  strict  impartiality  and 
justice  ? 

^  Pirke  Aboth^  iv.  9. 


LECTURE    II 

THE    TRIAL    AND    CONDEMNATION 

"When  a  judge  decides  not  according  to  truth  he  makes 
the  majesty  of  God  to  depart  from  Israel.  But 
if  he  judges  according  to  truth — were  it  only  for 
one  hour — it  is  as  if  he  established  the  whole 
world,  for  it  is  in  judgment  that  the  Divine 
Presence  in  Israel  has  its  habitation." 

Having  secured  their  Victim  the  "  officers 
from  the  chief  priests  and  Pharisees,"  followed 
by  Simon  Peter  and  another  disciple,  re- 
crossed  the  Wady  Kidron,  and  ascending 
the  steep  pitch  that  led  to  the  Temple 
enclosure,  took  Him  straightway  to  Annas 
the  ex-high  priest,  who  was  father-in-law  to 
Caiaphas  the  high  priest  de  facto. 

Annas  ben  Seth,  the  ninth  high  priest, 
dating  from  the  reign  of  Herod,  was 
appointed  to  that  office  in  the  year  7  a.d. 
by  Quirinius.  In  the  year  16  a.d.,  soon 
after  the  accession  of  the  Emperor  Tiberius, 
he  was  summarily  deposed  by  the  Procurator 
Valerius  Gratus,  the  predecessor  of  Pontius 

61 


62  THE  TRIAL  AND   CONDEMNATION      [Lect. 

Pilate,  for  exceeding  the  powers  permitted 
to  the  Sanhedrin,  and  executing  several 
Jewish  prisoners  without  first  obtaining  a 
warrant  from  the  Roman  governor. 

He  was  an  enormously  wealthy  Sadducee, 
and  having  innumerable  kinsmen  in  the 
Sanhedrin,  besides  five  immediate  relations 
who  at  one  time  or  other  held  the  Pontificate, 
was  a  personage  exercising  great  influence 
in  Jerusalem.  He  is  said  to  have  been  a 
keen  intriguer,  and  after  his  deposition  to 
have  meddled  considerably  in  affairs  pertain- 
ing to  the  high  priesthood.^  Josephus  says 
that  not  only  did  he  manage  to  get  five  of 
his  sons  appointed  high  priests  in  succession, 
but  that  he  also  contrived  to  hold  all  the 
important  and  lucrative  posts  in  the  Temple 
itself  Certain  it  is  that  he  and  his  family 
monopolised  the  sale  of  all  the  materials 
required  for  the  offerings  and  sacrifices. 
These  were  allowed  to  be  sold  in  the  outer 
courts  of  the  Temple  itself,  and  on  the 
Mount  of  Olives,  and  were  known  as  the 
Booths  of  Annas.  At  the  great  feasts  when 
all  the  country-side  flocked  to  Jerusalem,  an 
immense  and  extortionate  trade  was  done  in 
these  necessary  articles ;  hence  Our  Lord's 
^  Josephus,  Antiq.f  x.  5  ;  xx.  8. 


II.]  ANNAS  THE   HIGH   PRIEST  63 

wrath  at  His  Father's  house  being  turned 
into  a  "house  of  merchandise"  and  a  "den 
of  robbers." 

So  intensely  were  Annas  and  his  family 
hated  that  there  is  a  curse  against  them  in 
the  Talmud — "Woe  to  the  house  of  Annas, 
woe  to  their  serpent  hissings." 

Although  he  was  no  longer  the  actual 
high  priest,  he  was  still  so  de  jure ;  as 
arguing  from  Numbers  xxxv.  25,  28,  the 
Jews  considered  that  a  man  once  anointed 
as  high  priest — no  matter  what  happened 
subsequently  —  remained  a  high  priest  for 
ever.  Probably  they  considered  that  Valerius 
Gratus  had  no  right  to  depose  Annas,  and 
although  they  were  obliged  to  acknowledge 
Caiaphas  as  the  acting  high  priest,  they  did 
so  under  protest  and  continued  to  regard 
the  former  as  their  high  priest  still.  This 
accounts  for  St  John  calling  Annas  the  high 
priest  as  well  as  Caiaphas,^  and  for  St  Luke 
speaking  of  the  combined  high  priesthood 
of  Annas  and  Caiaphas.^  In  the  Acts  of 
the  Aposdes  Annas  is  distinctly  spoken  of 
as  the  high  priest,  which  is  the  last  time 
he    is    mentioned    by    name    in    the    New 

^  John  xviii.  3.  ^  Luke  iii.  2. 


64  THE  TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION       [LecT. 

Testament,^  though  he  is  alluded  to  on  two 
other  occasions.^ 

Annas,  sitting  alone  at  night,  began  to 
interrogate  privately  the  Prisoner,  and  by- 
asking  Him  two  leading  questions,  endea- 
voured first  to  make  Him  incriminate  His 
disciples,  and  then  incriminate  Himself  out 
of  His  own  mouth. ^ 

To  the  first  question  our  Lord  vouchsafed 
no  reply — it  was  too  utterly  ungenerous. 

To  the  second  He  gave  an  answer, 
appealing  at  the  same  time  to  the  funda- 
mental principle  of  Hebrew  law.  "  I  have 
spoken  without  reserve  in  temple  and 
synagogue,  and  in  secret  have  I  said 
nothing.  Why  askest  thou  Me  ?  Ask  those 
who  heard  Me.''  This  was  a  reminder  to 
Annas,  an  elder  of  the  Sanhedrin  and  there- 
fore a  jurist,  that  the  question  should  have 
been  addressed  to  the  witnesses  and  not  to 
the  prisoner.  It  was  the  voice  of  the 
Hebrew  citizen  claiming  justice  and  the 
riofht  of  fair  trial  from  his  interrooator  who 
knew  well  enough  that  in  questioning  his 
solitary  prisoner  privately  and  in  the  dead 
of  night,  he  was  himself  committing  a  serious 

^  Acts  iv.  6.  "^  Acts  vii.  i  ;  ix.  i. 

^  John  xviii.  19. 


11.]       IMPORTANCE  OF  WITNESSES        65 

breach  of  that  very  law  he  was  in  duty 
bound  to  administer  justly.  This  plea  was 
unanswerable  ;  the  ex-high  priest  was  silent. 
After  the  insulting  blow  dealt  by  one  of  the 
bystanders,  Christ  again  took  His  stand 
upon  His  rights  and  insisted  upon  the 
evidence  of  the  witnesses.  "  If  I  have  done 
evil,  bear  zvitness  of  the  evil." 

Probably  we  in  Europe  in  this  twentieth 
century  hardly  realise  the  extraordinary  im- 
portance of  the  witnesses  in  an  ancient  Jewish 
"trial  for  life."  The  prisoner  could  not  even 
be  legally  arrested  except  by  them  ;  not  only 
must  the  initiative  come  from  them,  but  the 
whole  onus  and  responsibility  of  the  trial 
rested  upon  the  witnesses  alone.  Nothing,  in 
fact,  could  be  legally  effected  without  them. 

In  their  absence  Jesus  Christ  was  an 
unaccused  man.     Annas  could  do  nothing. 

Now  this  interrogation  of  Our  Lord  by 
Annas  was  flagrantly  illegal  from  another 
point  of  view  also.  It  was  forbidden  under 
any  circumstances  to  question  a  suspected 
man  in  private  before  he  was  formally 
brought  to  public  trial  by  the  witnesses,  of 
whom  there  must  be  at  least  two.  No 
personal  investigations  were  allowed.  Upon 
this  point  Salvador  is  very  definite.     "  Un 

I 


66  THE  TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION       [Lect. 

prIncipe  perpetuellement  reproduit  dans  les 
Ventures  hebraiques,  resume  deja  les  deux 
conditions  de  publicite  et  de  liberty.  On  ne 
soumettait  pas  Thomme  accuse  a  des  inter- 
rogatoires  occultes,  ou  dans  son  trouble 
I'innocent  peut  fournir  des  armes  mortelles 
contre  lui."  ^  Moreover,  Annas  had  arrogated 
to  himself  an  illegal  position.  He  had 
practically  constituted  himself  the  prisoner's 
prosecutor ;  and  in  Hebrew  law  it  was  the 
duty  of  the  judge  to  seek  for  every  reason 
and  excuse  for  releasing  and  not  condemning 
the  accused,  especially  if  he  stood  in  danger 
of  losing  his  life. 

No  witnesses  being  present,  and  thus 
not  being  able  to  proceed  further  with  the 
case,  Annas  "therefore  sent  him  bound  to 
Caiaphas."  By  this  time  it  must  have  been 
far  into  the  night.  The  Sanhedrin  could  not 
legally  sit  until  after  the  offering  of  the  sacri- 
fice on  the  ensuing  morning,  and  as  a  criminal 
trial  where  life  was  likely  to  be  involved 
might  not'  be  begun,  continued,  and  ended 
on  the  selfsame  day,  it  would  have  meant 
detaining  the  prisoner  for  at  least  nine  days, 
owing  to  the  Passover  week  being  followed 
by  a  Sabbath.     In  the  meantime  there  would 

^  Institutions  de  Moise,  i,  366. 


II.]  CAIAPHAS   THE   HIGH   PRIEST  67 

be  no  saying  but  that  the  very  multitude 
who  helped  to  arrest  Him,  or  His  own 
friends  from  Galilee  might  attempt  a  rescue 
and  cause  a  tumult. 

Probably  these  considerations,  combined 
with  his  fixed  determination  to  put  Christ 
to  death,  induced  Caiaphas  to  take  the  illegal 
course  of  summoning  witnesses  and  com- 
mencing the  trial  in  the  palace  during  the 
night. 

Joseph  Caiaphas,  high  priest  de  facto  in 
Jerusalem  at  the  time  of  Our  Lord's  trial, 
was  the  son-in-law  and  successor  of  Annas. 
He  was  appointed  to  the  Pontifical  office 
by  Valerius  Gratus  in  the  year  a.d.  i8,  and 
like  most  of  his  predecessors  of  that  period 
was  removed  in  due  course,  in  a.d.  36  by 
Vitellius.  There  were  no  less  than  twenty- 
eight  high  priests  during  a  period  of  one 
hundred  and  sixty  years,  and  Tiberius  is 
reported  to  have  remarked  that  the  rapid  way 
in  which  new  high  priests  succeeded  each 
other  in  Jerusalem  was  exactly  "like  flies 
alighting  upon  a  sore."  Caiaphas  was  a 
Sadducee,  and  therefore  always  in  conflict 
with  Christ's  teaching  and  bitterly  opposed 
to  Him.  He  was  a  great  friend  of  Pontius 
Pilate,    and    was    determined    on    political 


68  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION       [Lect. 

issues,  if  on  no  others,  to  sacrifice  the 
Preacher.  Hence  we  have  the  anomalous 
and  incredible  fact,  that  the  very  man  who 
a  few  hours  before  had  given  the  order  for 
Christ's  arrest  for  the  express  purpose  of 
putting  Him  to  death,  was  now  to  be  the 
President  of  the  Council  of  Judges  which 
was  to  try  Him. 

Caiaphas  was  said  to  be  a  man  of  very 
low  intellectual  capacity,  and  his  conduct 
as  President  of  the  Sanhedrin  during  the 
trial  showed  him  to  be  one  of  extremely 
weak  character,  and  of  no  moral  courage 
or  mental  force.  He  is  only  once  mentioned 
by  name  after  these  events,  when,  "  the  rulers 
and  elders  and  scribes "  being  gathered 
together  to  question  Peter  and  John,  Annas 
is  spoken  of  as  the  high  priest,  and  Caiaphas 
is  placed  among  his  kindred.^ 

The  exact  site  of  the  high  priest's  palace 
in  which  the  trial  took  place  is  not  certainly 
known,  though  I  believe  it  is  considered  more 
than  probable  that  it  was  situated  between 
the  Upper  City  and  the  Tyropsean  Valley. 
Doubtless  Annas  and  Caiaphas  dwelt  in 
the  same  building,  so  that  when  Annas  had 
concluded  his  interrogation  of  Our  Lord, 
^  Acts  iv.  5,  6. 


II.]  THE   HIGH   priest's   PALACE  69 

he  had  simply  to  send  Him  to  Caiaphas 
across  the  uncovered  courtyard  which  is  to 
be  found  in  every  Oriental  house.  The 
palace  would  in  all  probability  be  in  close 
proximity  to  the  Temple,  and  the  late  Sir 
Charles  Wilson  has  suggested  that  "  it  may 
have  been  the  same  place  as  the  house 
(01K109)  of  Ananias  the  high  priest  which  was 
destroyed  by  the  insurgents  during  the  tumult 
which  commenced  the  war  with  Rome."^ 
It  would  consist  of  suites  of  apartments  built 
round  an  open  paved  court,  and  entered 
from  the  street  through  a  porch  with  barred 
door,  at  which  there  would  always  be  a 
doorkeeper.  Probably  as  in  modern  Eastern 
houses  the  door  would  be  flanked  by  a  small 
room  on  either  side,  where  the  servants 
congregate  and  chat  incessantly. 

A  comparison  of  the  four  gospels  points 
to  Annas  and  Caiaphas  living  in  the  same 
house,"  and  it  would  be  entirely  in  accordance 
with  Oriental  practice  where  families  herd 
together  under  one  roof,  though  Annas,  as 
head  of  the  family,  probably  had  his  own 
separate  apartments. 

^  Golgotha  afid  the  Holy  Sepulchre^  p.  39 ;  Josephus, 
Wars,  ii.  §  6,  17. 

2  Matt.  xxvi.  57-71  ;  Mark  xiv.  53-68  ;  Luke  xxii.  54-61  ; 
John  xviii.  12-25. 


70  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION       [Lect. 

Notwithstanding  that  the  Mishna  strictly 
directs  that  "  in  capital  cases  the  trial  must 
commence  and  end  in  the  daytime,"^  "trials 
for  money  "  alone  being  allowed  to  be  finished 
at  night,  Caiaphas,  the  scribes,  elders,  and 
the  whole  Council  {a-weSpiov)^  proceeded  to 
commence  the  trial. 

To  fit  in  the  events  of  that  night  in 
their  correct  sequence  is  complicated  and 
difficult,  the  four  accounts  given  by  the 
Evangelists  being  confused  and  contradictory. 
Two  of  them  o;ive  first  the  taking  of  evidence 
from  false  witnesses,  which  was  followed  by 
an  attempt  to  extort  a  confession.  Matthew 
and  Mark  read  distinctly  as  if  Christ  was  at 
once  taken  to  Caiaphas  after  the  arrest, 
under  whose  presidency  were  held  two  sepa- 
rate trials  before  the  Sanhedrin  —  one  im- 
mediately, I.e.,  during  the  night,  and  another 
on  the  following  morning.^ 

St  Luke's  account  is  that  they  took  Him 
to  the  palace,  where  He  was  mocked  and 
beaten,*  and  that  at  daybreak ^  the  "assembly 

^  D£  Syn.,   32  ;   Rabbinowicz,  Lt'gislation  criminellc  du 
Talmud^  p.  79  ;    Mishna,  n.  7. 
"  Matt.  xxvi.  57,  59 ;  Mark  xiv.  53,  55. 

*  Matt.  xxvi.  57,  59 ;  xxvii.  I  ;  Mark  xiv.  55  ;  xv.  I. 

*  Luke  xxii.  54,  63.  »  Luke  xxiii.  66. 


II.]     PROBABLE  SEQUENCE  OF  EVENTS      Jl 

of  the  elders,"  which  certainly  implies 
members  of  the  Sanhedrin,  led  Him  before 
"their  council"  {a-wiSpiov)  who,  after  asking 
Him  the  one  crucial  question,  "Art  thou 
the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,"  arose  in  a 
body  and  took  Him  to  Pilate.^  This 
evangelist  does  not  mention  the  false 
witnesses,  though  he  implies  them. 

St  John  merely  states  that  He  was  first 
taken  to  Annas,  who  questioned  Him  and 
sent  Him  to  Caiaphas,  and  he  omits  all 
mention  of  a  trial  before  the  high  priest, 
saying  simply  that  "they  led  Him  from 
Caiaphas  into  the  Prsetorium "  in  the  early 
morning.^ 

Putting  together  the  four  narratives  the 
sequence  of  events  seems  to  be  the  following. 

Christ  was  first  taken  to  Annas  and  by 
him  sent  on  to  Caiaphas,  where  some 
members  of  the  Sanhedrin  having  assembled, 
the  false  witnesses  were  brought  in.  Their 
evidence  failing  to  "agree  together,"  and 
therefore  no  charge  being  formulated  against 
the  Prisoner,  the  high  priest  endeavoured 
by  putting  Him  upon  oath^  to  extort  a 
confession  which,  if  He  failed  to  substantiate, 

^  Luke  xxii.  70  ;  xxiii.  i.  *  John  xviii.  24,  28. 

'  Matt.  xxvi.  63  J  Mark  xiv.  61. 


72  THE  TRIAL  AND   CONDEMNATION       [Lect. 

practically  amounted  to  "  blasphemy  against 
God."  Without  giving  the  Prisoner  any 
opportunity  of  supporting  His  claim  or 
bringing  forward  witnesses  to  prove  it,  the 
President  at  once  pronounced  Him  to  be 
worthy  of  death,^  and  proceeded  to  take 
the  votes  of  the  assembled  judges,  who  all 
condemned  Him.  These  proceedings  ended 
the  first  trial.  In  the  short  time  that  elapsed 
between  this  and  the  second  trial,  Christ 
was  tormented  by  the  "officers"  —  His 
Jewish  guard.  At  daybreak  came  the  trial 
before  the  whole  Sanhedrin,  but  neither 
Matthew  nor  Mark  state  what  form  that 
"  consultation  "  took. 

Luke's  account  is  that  they  attempted  to 
obtain  practically  the  same  admission  from 
the  Prisoner  as  was  extorted  at  the  first  trial. ^ 

St  John  omits  it  altogether. 


The    Trial. 

We  must  now  begin  to  follow  the  details 
of  the  Trial,  comparing  them  with  the  Jewish 
law  concerning   the   method   of  conducting 
a  "trial  for  life." 
'  Matt.  xxvi.  66  ;  Mark  xiv.  64.  ^  Luke  xxii.  67-70. 


II.]  LEGALITY  OF  THE   TRIAL  73 

To  begin  with,  Salvador  in  his  Institutions 
cie  Mo'ise  clearly  points  out  that  four  funda- 
mental principles  underlay  the  whole  system 
of  Hebrew  criminal  jurisprudence  as  laid 
down  in  the  Mishna ;  these  were : 

a.  Strictness  in  accusation. 

b.  Publicity  in  discussion. 

c.  Full  freedom  granted  to  the  accused 

to  defend  himself. 

d.  Assurance  against  all  errors  of  testi- 

mony. 

These  points  we  must  keep  clearly  before 
us  throughout  the  whole  proceedings. 

It  has  been  first  of  all  contended  by  some 
writers  that  the  trial  being  held  in  the  high 
priest's  palace  invalidated  it,  but  as  forty 
years  before  the  court  had  given  up  sitting 
in  the  Lishcath  ha  Gazith  (see  p.  50)  the 
Talmud  recognises  the  legality  of  the  high 
priest's  palace  as  a  place  of  session.  Strictly 
speaking,  not  less  than  twenty-three  members 
should  have  been  present  the  whole  time  to 
take  part  in  a  trial  for  life  ;  but  it  is  unlikely 
that  being  in  the  dead  of  night  this  regulation 
was  adhered  to.  Also  the  fact  that  on  the 
next  morning  the  Prisoner  was  taken  before 
the  "whole  council "  seems  to  imply  that  the 

K 


74  THE  TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION       [Lect. 

necessary  quorum  were  not  present  at  the 
night  sitting. 

It  is  possible  that  messengers  had 
been  despatched  during  the  night  appris- 
ing the  seventy-one  members  of  the  Great 
Sanhedrin  of  the  arrest  of  Christ,  and  that 
they  consequently  mustered  in  strong  force 
in  the  morning.  It  must  be  admitted  that 
it  was  a  grave  breach  of  the  law  that  the 
trial  was  begun  at  night.  "  Judgments  in 
souls  are  conducted  by  day,  and  must  be 
settled  by  day,"  moreover  the  Great 
Sanhedrin  might  only  sit  during  the  hours 
of  daylight. 

The  judgment  being  "  set,"  let  us  turn  first 
to  the  Mishna  and  learn  from  its  pages  what 
ought  to  have  been  the  proper  course  for  the 
Council  to  pursue,  comparing  it  with  what 
actually  transpired  as  stated  in  the  Gospels. 

First  the  witnesses  who  ?nust  be  voluntary 
are  instructed  to  bring  in  their  prisoner  and 
state  their  evidence  against  him.  As  there 
could  be  no  "sole  judge,"  so  must  there  be 
no  "  sole  witness,"  ^  and  before  all  things  the 
accusation  must  be  publicly  made.  A  Hebrew 
trial  was  practically  a  public  duet  between 
the  judges  and  the  witnesses.  To  use 
'  Deut.  xix.  15-18. 


II.]  IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  WITNESSES  75 

modern  legal  phraseology,  there  were  no 
such  persons  as  "Counsel  for  the  prosecu- 
tion," and  "Counsel  for  the  defendant." 
The  witnesses — two  at  least — must  bring, 
the  arrested  man  into  court  on  their  own 
initiative  and  there  state  his  crime.  Until 
t\iQy publicly  formulated  their  evidence  agains 
him  before  the  tribunal,  he  was  to  all  intents 
and  purposes  innocent — I  might  almost  say 
unaccused.  The  evidence  of  the  witnesses 
was  practically  the  accusation ;  there  was 
no  such  thing  as  a  formal  indictment  before 
the  judges. 

The  witnesses  having  stated  on  oath  their 
charge,  those  for  the  defence  were  at  once 
called  upon  to  speak,  and  the  defendant 
himself  might  say  anything  he  liked  on 
his  own  behalf.  It  was  also  permitted  to 
any  of  the  scholars  present  if  they  could 
say  anything  in  favour  of  the  accused  to 
do  so,  but  they  might  not  say  anything — 
even  if  they  could  prove  it  —  to  his  dis- 
advantage. If  what  they  stated  seemed 
likely  to  be  to  the  point,  the  judges  are 
directed  to  call  them  to  take  a  place  beside 
them  on  the  bench,  where  they  must  remain 
during  the  trial.  Subsequently  they  were  to 
be  put   on  oath — which  they  were  allowed 


y6  THE  TRIAL  AND  CONDEMNATION      [Lect. 

to  take  sitting — and  their  statements  were 
then  carefully  sifted.  No  cross-examination 
was  permitted,  the  trial  was  a  conflict  of 
evidences,  but  the  onus  of  proving  the 
accused  guilty  lay  upon  the  shoulders  of 
those  who  arrested  him.  So  completely 
were  they  made  to  feel  the  grave  responsi- 
bility of  their  act  that  before  giving  their 
evidence  they  were  bound  over  to  tell  the 
truth  by  a  most  solemn  oath,  and,  in  the 
event  of  capital  punishment  ensuing,  the  two 
principal  witnesses  had  to  cast  the  first  stones 
at  the  condemned  man.  The  judges  were 
essentially  in  the  position  of  counsel  for  the 
accused.  Their  duty  was  to  protect  him 
by  every  means  in  their  power^  and  with 
all  the  precautions,  quibbles,  and  sanctions 
contained  in  the  Mishna  the  wonder  is  that 
any  one  ever  suffered  the  death  penalty. 

To  all  intents  and  purposes  it  was  the 
Sanhedrin  who  prosecuted  Christ  by  seek- 
ing for  false  witnesses  in  order  that  they 
might  put '  Him  to  death  —  two  flagrant 
breaches  of  the  law,  the  former  being,  as 
Taylor  Innes  observes  in  his  admirable  Legal 
Monograph,  "a  scandalous  indecorum." 

A  stranger  sight  can  seldom  have  been 
seen  in  the  High  Court  of  Jewry  than  that 


it]  MONEY   TRIALS  j^ 

of  the  judges  sending  out  to  seek  for 
witnesses,  in  order  to  be  able  to  proceed 
against  a  prisoner  whom  they  had  ordered 
to  be  arraigned  before  them  for  a  pre- 
determined verdict. 

Tlie  tractate,  JDe  Synhedris,  gives  us  pre- 
cise details  as  to  the  method  to  be  pursued 
in  criminal  cases. 

Although  the  Talmud  was  not  reduced  to 
writing  until  many  years  after  this  famous 
trial  took  place,  and  although  it  is  possible 
that  under  the  Roman  Government  of  Judaea 
some  restrictions  in,  or  variations  of,  pro- 
cedure may  have  been  made,  the  consensus 
of  learned  Jewish  opinion  is,  that  in  all  im- 
portant points  the  regulations  there  laid 
down,  obtained  in  the  reign  of  Tiberius. 

Jewish  trials  were,  roughly  speaking, 
divided  into  two  classes  : 

"  Money  Trials  "  and  "  Trials  for  Life," 
or,  as  they  are  also  called,  "  Trials  in  Souls." 

"Money  Trials"  and  "Trials  for  Life" 
had  the  same  rules  of  enquiry  and  investiga- 
tion. But  they  differed  in  procedure  on  the 
following  points : 

"The  former  require  only  three,  the  latter 
twenty  and  three  judges. 


78  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION       [Lect. 

"In  the  former  it  matters  not  on  which 
side  the  judges  speak  who  give  the  first 
opinions :  in  the  latter,  those  who  are  in 
favour  of  acquittal  must  speak  first. 

"  In  the  former  a  majority  of  one  is  always 
enough :  in  the  latter  a  majority  of  one  is 
enough  to  acquit,  but  it  requires  a  majority 
of  two  to  condemn. 

"In  the  former  a  decision  may  be  quashed 
on  review  (for  error)  no  matter  which  way 
it  has  gone  :  in  the  latter  a  condemnation 
may  be  quashed,   but  not  an  acquittal. 

"In  the  former,  disciples  of  the  law  present 
in  the  court  may  speak — as  assessors — on 
either  side :  in  the  latter  they  may  speak 
in  favour  of  the  accused,  but  not  against 
him. 

"  In  the  former,  a  judge  who  has  indicated 
his  opinion,  no  matter  on  which  side,  may 
change  his  mind  :  in  the  latter,  he  who  has 
given  his  voice  for  guilt  may  change  his 
mind,  but  not  he  who  has  given  his  voice 
for  acquitt&.l. 

"  Money  trials  are  commenced  only  in  the 
daytime,  but  may  be  concluded  after  night- 
fall :  trials  for  life  are  commenced  only  in 
the  daytime,  and  must  also  be  concluded 
during  the  daytime. 


ri.]  ''trials  in  souls"  79 

"  The  former  may  be  concluded  by  either 
acquittal  or  condemnation  on  the  day  on 
which  they  have  begun  :  the  latter  may  be 
concluded  on  that  day,  if  there  is  a  sentence 
of  acquittal,  but  must  be  postponed  to  a 
second  day  if  there  is  to  be  a  condemnation 
to  death.  For  this  reason  capital  trials  are 
not  held  on  the  day  before  a  Sabbath  or  a 
Feast  day. 

"In  the  former  they  begin  by  asking  the 
opinion  of  the  eldest :  in  the  latter  with 
those  who  sit  at  the  side. 

"  All  are  qualified  to  judge  trials  for  money, 
but  not  every  one  is  qualified  to  judge  a 
trial  for  life — only  priests,  Levites,  and  those 
Israelites  who  may  legally  marry  priests' 
daughters  are  thus  qualified."^ 

If  the  evidence  offered  on  behalf  of  the 
accused  is  sufficiently  cogent,  the  judges 
proceed  to  vote  at  once,  and  acquit  and 
dismiss  him.  If  not  the  trial  must  be  post- 
poned until  the  following  day,  when  the 
witnesses  against  the  prisoner  are  put  on 
oath,  and  their  evidence  is  subjected  to  a 
most  searching  investigation. 

"If  a  man  is  found  innocent  the  court 
absolves   him.     But  if  not,  his  judgment  is 

'  De  Syn,,  iv.  1. 


So  THE  TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION       [LeCT. 

put  off  until  the  following  day.  Meantime 
the  judges  go  out,  and  meeting  outside  the 
court  they  confer  together  all  night,  eatmg 
but  little  food  and  drinking  no  wine.  On 
the  following  morning  they  return  into  court 
and  vote  over  again  with  the  like  precau- 
tions as  before."^ 

The  Mishna  defines  carefully  those  persons 
whose  relationships  or  affinities  to  the  accused 
shall  preclude  them  from  giving  evidence 
against  him,  and  also  those  whose  proclivities 
shall  disqualify  them. 

Brothers,  brothers  of  father  and  mother, 
brothers-in-law,  father-in-law,  stepfather  and 
uncles  by  marriage,  merchants  who  trade 
in  the  Sabbatic  year,  usurers,  gamblers,  and 
those  who  bet  (?)  on  the  flight  of  doves.^ 

The  judges  having  satisfied  themselves 
that  not  any  of  these  disqualifications  exist, 
next  proceed  to  adjure  each  witness  separately 
in  the  following  solemn  words  : 

"Forget  not,  O  witness,  that  it  is  one 
thing  to  give  evidence  in  a  trial  for  money, 
and  another  in  a  trial  for  life.  In  a  money 
suit,  if  thy  witness  bearing  shall  do  wrong, 
money  may  repair  that  wrong.  But  in  this 
trial  for  life,  if  thou  sinnest,  the  blood  of 
1  De  Syn.,  v.  1.  '  ^^  '^>'«-  "*•  3'  4- 


II.]  SOLEMNITY   OF   OATH  8 1 

the  accused  and  the  blood  of  his  seed  unto 
the  end  of  time  shall  be  imputed  unto 
thee.  .  .  .  Therefore  was  Adam  created,  one 
man  and  alone,  to  teach  thee  that  if  any 
shall  destroy  one  soul  out  of  Israel,  he  is 
held  by  the  Scripture  to  be  as  if  he  had 
destroyed  the  world.  .  .  .  For  a  man  from 
one  signet  ring,  may  strike  off  many  impres- 
sions, and  all  of  them  shall  be  exactly  alike. 
But  He,  the  King  of  Kings,  He  the  Holy 
and  Blessed,  has  struck  off  from  His  type 
of  the  first  man  the  forms  of  all  men  that 
shall  live ;  yet  so,  that  no  one  human  being 
is  wholly  alike  to  any  other.  Wherefore 
let  us  think  and  believe  that  the  whole 
world  was  created  for  such  a  man  as  he 
whose  life  hangs  on  thy  words," 

If  after  this  the  witness  feels  he  dare 
not  take  the  oath,  he  is  to  be  dismissed 
immediately  and  sent  outside  the  court ; 
but  should  he  say,  "  I  will  nevertheless 
swear,"  he  shall  stand  up,  and  in  a  language 
which  he  understands  take  the  oath  by 
"the  Lord  the  God   of   Heaven." 

Before,  however,  he  actually  takes  it,  the 
court  is  directed  once  again  to  warn  the 
witness  in  the  following  words  : 

"Be  aware  that  the  oath  which  you  take 

L 


82  THE  TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION        [Lect. 

is  not  according  to  your  own  mind,  but 
to  the  mind  of  the  Omnipotent  and  of  the 
court ;  as  Moses  said  :  '  And  not  with  you 
only  do  I  make  this  covenant  and  this  oath, 
but  with  Him  that  standeth  here  with  us 
this  day.' "  ^ 

A  small  body  of  the  judges  shall  then 
privately  examine  each  witness  in  turn ; 
and  having  satisfied  themselves  that  the 
evidence  is  relevant  and  suitable,  shall  bring 
him  into  court,  where  each  one  separately 
and  out  of  hearing  of  his  fellows,  is  to  make 
his  statements  in  the  presence  of  the  accused. 

Jewish  law  recognised  three  forms  of  oral 
evidence : 

a.  A  vain  testimony. 

b.  A  standing  testimony. 

c.  An  equal  or  adequate  testimony  ;   or 

as  St  Mark  expresses  it,  "the 
testimony  of  them  that  agree 
together." 

The  first  was  practically  worthless  and  not 
even  provisionally  taken  into  account  by  the 
judges. 

The  second  was  considered  as  sufficiently 
^  Deut.  xxix.  14,  15. 


II.]  FORMS    OF    ORAL    EVIDENCE  83 

relevant  to  be  allowed  to  stand  provisionally, 
in  case  subsequent  facts  confirmed  it,  when 
it  was  permitted  to  complete  the  evidence 
as  an  "adequate  testimony." 

The  third  was  the  words  of  them  "that 
agree  together,"  and  the  smallest  discrepancy 
was  held  to  invalidate  it.^ 

If  the  witness  perjured  himself,  the  punish- 
ment was,  "Ye  shall  do  unto  him  as  he  had 
thought  to  do  unto  his  brother."" 

The  evidence  having  been  taken  and 
the  witnesses  for  the  defence  having  been 
heard,  the  judges  then  proceeded  to  vote, 
beginning  with  the  youngest  members  seated 
at  the  ends  of  the  semicircle,  the  casting 
vote  being  given  by  the  President. 

"If  the  judges  find  a  good  reason  to 
acquit  him  (the  accused),  they  do  so  im- 
mediately ;  and  if  not,  they  postpone  the 
trial  until  the  morrow." 

"If  twelve  of  them  acquit  and  eleven 
condemn,  he  is  acquitted.  But  if  twelve 
condemn  and  eleven  acquit,  and  even  if 
eleven  condemn  and  eleven  acquit,  but  the 
twenty-third  says,  '  I  am    in  doubt,'  even  if 

^  De  Syn.,  v.  3,  4. 

^  Deut.  xix.  18, 19  ;  Susanna,  61,  62. 


84  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION       [Lect. 

twenty-two  are  for  condemning-  or  acquit- 
ting, and  one  says,  '  I  do  not  know,'  judges 
are  to  be  added." 

"  And  to  what  number?  " 

"Two  and  two  till  the  whole  number 
reaches  seventy-one,  and  then  if  thirty-six 
acquit  and  thirty  -  five  condemn  he  is 
acquitted  ;  but  if  vice  versa  the  discussion  is 
prolonged  until  one  of  those  who  condemns 
accepts  the  opinion  of  those  who  acquit," 

"If  judgment  is  at  last  pronounced  they 
bring  out  the  man  sentenced,  and  stone  him. 
The  place  of  punishment  is  to  be  apart 
from  the  place  of  judgment,  for  it  is  said 
in  Leviticus  xxiv.  14,  '  Bring  the  blasphemer 
without  the  camp.'  "  ^ 

The  original  method  of  stoning,  was  for 
the  principal  witness  to  cast  the  first  stone 
at  the  condemned  man  ;  if  this  did  not  prove 
fatal,  the  bystanders  then  hurled  stones  at 
him  until  death  ensued. 

In  Our  Lord's  time  it  was  different;  the 
criminal  was  thrown  down  from  a  height ; 
the  Bet-ha-Sekala  or  Stoning  Place  being 
twice  the  height  of  a  man.  The  chief  wit- 
ness   grasping    him    firmly    by    the    thighs 

^  De  Syfi.,  V.  vi. 


II.]  METHOD    OF    STONING  85 

thrust  him  backwards  in  such  a  manner  that 
he  fell  on  his  back.  Should  he,  however, 
fall  face  downwards,  he  must  be  turned 
over.  It  was  only  in  the  event  of  the  fall 
not  proving  fatal  that  all  Israel,  i.e.,  the  by- 
standers "stoned  him  with  stones  till  he 
died."  The  body  was  buried  under  a  cairn 
outside  the  city  gates  or  in  a  common  burial 
place  belonging  to  the  Sanhedrin,  and  the 
relatives  were  allowed  later  on  to  gather 
together  the  bones  for  interment  in  the 
family  tomb.  If  the  criminal  was  put  to 
death  for  being  either  a  blasphemer  or  an 
idolater  the  corpse  was  at  once  gibbeted 
until  sunset,  and  then  buried.^ 

So  greatly  was  capital  punishment  depre- 
cated by  the  Talmud  that,  after  the  pro- 
cession had  started  for  the  place  of  execution, 
it  was  possible  to  save  the  condemned  man  ; 
and  arrangements  were  made  for  a  reprieve 
being  granted  even  when  near  the  stoning 
place. 

"  An  officer  shall  stand  at  the  door  of 
the  court  with  a  flag  in  his  hand  ;  another 
mounted  shall  follow  the  procession  so  far, 
but  shall  halt  at   the   furthest  point    where 

*  De    Syn.^    xii.    3  ;     Josephus,    Antiq.,    iv.    8  ;     Jewish 
Encyclopicdia  on  "Capital  Punishment. 


86  THE  TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION        [Lect. 

he  can  see  the  man  with  the  flag  (the  judges 
remain  sitting),  and  if  any  one  offers  to 
prove  that  the  condemned  man  is  innocent, 
he  at  the  door  shall  wave  the  flag,  and  the 
horseman  instantly  shall  gallop  after  the 
condemned  and  recall  him  for  his  defence. 
Even  if  the  condemned  man  himself  says, 
*  I  have  something  more  to  say  in  my 
defence,'  he  is  to  be  brought  back  to  the 
court  even  four  or  five  times  provided  there 
is  something  in  it  which  is  worthy  of  con- 
sideration."^ 

From  the  above  quotations  from  the 
Mishna,  it  will  be  seen  what  careful  precau- 
tions —  I  might  almost  say  exaggerated 
precautions — were  taken  in  order  to  pre- 
serve the  life  of  every  Hebrew  citizen,  and 
to  ensure  him  strict  justice. 

Was  th^  law  adhered  to  in  the  trial  of 
Jesus  Christ  ? 

Let  us  turn  to  the  Gospels  and  compare  the 
actual  proceedings  of  the  court,  with  those 
that  we  have  seen  should  have  taken  place. 

Instead  of  the  witnesses  bringing  in  their 
prisoner,  "they  that  had  taken  Him,"  i.e.^ 
^  De  Syn.^  v.  5  ;  vi.  i. 


II.]  THE  HAKIROTH  87 

the  emissaries  of  His  judges  brought  Him 
before  the  Council,  and  those  who  should 
have  been  His  protectors  ''sought  false 
witnesses  to  put  Him  to  death,"  and  found 
them  not,  for  though  many  came  forward 
and  bare  witness  against  Him,  their  testi- 
mony was  not  "adequate."^  Two  men  at 
last  were  found  whose  words  were  evidently 
regarded  as  "  standing  testimony,"  though 
in  the  end  it  proved  to  be  an  inadequate 
or  "  not  even  "  testimony. 

These  witnesses  were  then  sworn(seep.  80), 
and  their  evidence  elicited  by  the  series  of 
questions  known  as  Hakiroth. 

a.  In  what  Sabbatic  period  did  you  hear 

so  and  so  say  this  thing  ? 

b.  \x\  what  year  of  the  Sabbatic  period  ? 
r.   In  what  month  ? 

d.  On  what  date  of  the  month  ? 

e.  On  what  day  of  the  week  ? 

f.  At  what  hour  ? 

g.  I  n  what  place  ? 

These  would  be  followed  by  another  set 
called  Bedikoth^  which  were  of  purely 
secondary  importance,  but  useful  for  purposes 

^  Matt.  xxvi.  59  ;  Mark  xiv.  55. 


88  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION       [Lect. 

of    comparison    in    weighing    a    "standing 
testimony." 

The  witnesses  swore  that  they  heard  Him 
say : 

a.  "  I  am  able  to  destroy  the  temple  of 
God  and  build  {oikoSojulwcu)  it  in 
three  days."  Matt.  xxvi.  6i. 
d.  "I  will  destroy  this  temple  that  is 
made  with  hands,  and  in  three  days 
I  will  build  [oiKoSoiJ.i'ia-w)  another 
made  without  hands."  Mark  xiv. 
58- 

What  Christ  really  did  say  is  recorded  in 
the  Fourth  Gospel.     John  ii.  19,  21. 

"  Destroy  this  temple  and  in  three  days 
I  will  raise  (eyepvo)  it  up."  But  He  spake 
of  the  temple  of  His  body. 

Christ  put  the  case  hypothetically.  "  If 
you  destroy  /  will  raise  up." 

These  witnesses  twisted  the  sense  round 
to  "  Destroy  and  I  will  rebuild,"  or  "  I  will 
destroy  and  in  three  days  rebuild  without 
hands." 

In  the  main,  both  statements  amounted 
to  practically  the  same  thing,  but  in  verbal 
details    there   were    discrepancies ;    and   by 


II.]  THE   TWO   CHARGES  89 

Hebrew  law  "the  least  discordance  between 
the  evidence  of  witnesses  was  held  to  destroy 
its  value."  ^ 

The  first  charge,  if  substantiated,  was 
Sorcery,  for  only  by  Satanic  agency  could 
the  massive  building,  which  it  had  taken 
forty  and  six  years  to  rear,  be  rebuilt  in 
three  days. 

The  punishment  for  Sorcery  was  death. 

The  second  charge  included  more  than 
Sorcery.  The  destruction  of  their  beloved 
Temple,  their  pride  and  joy,  and  the  dwell- 
ing-place of  Jehovah,  would  be  Sacrilege 
as  well,  and,  to  a  theocratic  commonwealth 
like  the  Jewish,  Blasphemy. 

The  punishment  for  that  was  stoning  and 
exposure  of  the  body. 

The  evidence  being  inconclusive  it  was 
now  the  duty  of  the  President  to  dismiss 
the  Prisoner  or  bid  Him  bring  forward 
witnesses  on  His  side ;  and  at  the  same  time 
sentence  the  false  witnesses  to  death. 

Instead  of  doing  this  the  high  priest  pro- 
ceeded to  commit  a  grave  breach  of  that 
very  law   his  exalted  position  alone  should 

^  Salvador,  Insi.  de  Mozse,  i.  373. 

M 


90  THE   TRIAL    AND   CONDEMNATION       [Lkct. 

have  prevented  him  from  doing.  Nor  can 
ignorance  be  pleaded  as  an  excuse  in  his 
case,  for  as  ex-officio  President  of  the 
Sanhedrin  he  must,  by  years  of  study  and 
practice  of  the  law,  have  been  intimately 
acquainted  with  its  every  detail  and  intricacy. 
Caiaphas — the  chief  judge — now  began  him- 
self to  question  the  Prisoner  before  him — a 
proceeding  which  was  absolutely  illegal. 

"  What  is  it  which  these  witness  against 
Thee  ? "     "  Answerest  Thou  nothing  ?  " 

And  this  from  him  whose  bounden  duty 
it  was  not  only  to  do  all  in  his  power  to 
protect  the  life  of  the  accused,  but  even  to 
refuse  to  accept  a  confession  of  guilt  unless 
it  was  proved  by  the  adequate  testimony 
of  two,  if  not  three,   witnesses ! 

In  such  a  hopelessly  unjust  trial,  Jesus 
Christ  quietly  refused  to  take  any  part,  and 
His  dignified  silence  is  far  more  impressive 
than  the  most  eloquent  defence.  It  was, 
at  the  same  time,  a  tacit  reminder  to  His 
judges  that  they  were  impugning  the  rights 
of  a  Hebrew  citizen,  to  whom  the  Bench 
should  address  no  question. 

Christ's  silence  was  the  keeping  of  the 
law. 

At     this     crisis     the    Sanhedrin    appear 


II-l  UNJUSTIFIABLE   ACT   OF   CAIAPHAS  QI 

to  have  got  thoroughly  out  of  hand. 
The  failure  of  the  witnesses  to  produce 
an  "  adequate  testimony "  had  evidently 
exasperated  them.  Hostile  and  illegal 
questions  were  hurled  at  the  Prisoner,  with 
the  intent  to  make  Him  incriminate  Himself, 
while  the  very  ground  of  the  enquiry  was 
shifted.  They  now  began  to  ask  Him  if 
He  was  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  and 
the  Son  of  the  Blessed.  It  was  the  old 
question  once  more  brought  forward,  and 
again  later  on  repeated  before  the  Great 
Sanhedrin.^  And  then  was  enacted  a  scene 
which  were  it  not  so  terribly  tragic  might 
almost  be  called  theatrical.  It  looks  as  if 
at  this  crisis,  Caiaphas,  infuriated  at  his 
unsuccessful  attempts  to  prove  the  Prisoner 
guilty  of  death,  completely  lost  his  head. 
Thwarted  at  every  turn,  he  seems  to  have 
become  overpowered  with  rage.  He  had 
already  violated  every  point  of  criminal 
procedure  in  order  to  gain  his  end,  and  yet 
the  Prisoner  before  him  was,  in  the  eyes  of 
their  law,  an  unaccused  man  and  ought  to 
have  been  released. 

Instead  of  setting  Him  at  liberty  Caiaphas 
"stood  up  "and  administered  to  the  Prisoner 
'  Luke  xxii.  67. 


92  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION       [Lect. 

the  most  solemn  form  of  oath  it  was  possible 
to  make — an  oath  so  solemn  that  it  was 
administered  sometimes,  when  all  else  failed, 
to  criminals  of  a  desperate  type,  in  order  to 
extort  finally  a  true  confession  of  their  crimes. 
It  was  a  wholly  unjustifiable  step,  but 
Christ  accepting  as  a  pious  Jew  the  awful 
responsibility  thrust  upon  Him,  answered 
simply,  "  I  am  ;  and  you  some  day  shall  see 
the  Son  of  Man  sitting  at  the  right  hand 
of  power,  and  coming  in  the  clouds  of 
heaven." 

This  was  the  supreme  moment  for  the 
Jewish  nation.  On  oath,  the  most  weighty 
any  Hebrew  could  make,  Christ  avowed 
Himself  before  the  highest  tribunal  in  His 
country,  and  under  the  very  shadow  of 
Jehovah's  dwelling-place,  to  be  the  Son  of 
the  Blessed,  their  Messiah  and  their  King. 
Either  the  Prisoner  at  the  bar  was  in  truth 
that  which  He  claimed  to  be — the  long- 
looked  -  for  hope  of  Israel,  or  else  He 
blasphemed  Jehovah. 

No  one,  however,  paused  to  ask  for  His 
credentials,  no  man  asked  Him  then  as  they 
had  in  former  days,  "What  sign  showest 
thou  that  we  may  believe,"   none  enquired 


II.]  THE   CONDEMNATION  93 

of  themselves  "What  and  if,  after  all,  this 
should  be  the  Deliverer."  Without  even 
suggesting  that  He  should  prove  His  words 
Caiaphas  exclaimed :  "He  hath  spoken 
blasphemy.  Behold  now  ye  have  heard 
His  blasphemy." 

When  a  man  blasphemed  the  God  of 
Israel,  the  judges  were  directed  to  arise 
and  rend  their  outer  garment  from  the  neck 
downwards,  with  a  rent  that  never  again  was 
to  be  sewn  together.^  This  Caiaphas  did, 
and  turning  as  directed  by  the  law  to  either 
side  of  the  semicircle,  he  put  the  momentous 
question  first  to  right  and  then  to  left. 

For  Life? 

For  Death  ? 

And  all  replied  : 

IsH  Maveth,  i.e.,  A  man  of  death.^ 

"So  passed  that  great  condemnation." 
A  condemnation  that  was  to  change  the 
whole    aspect    of    future     history  —  and    to 

^  De  Syn.,  vii.  6,  ii. 

'  I  am  aware  that  Joseph  of  Arimathasa  "  had  not  con- 
sented to  their  counsel  and  deed,"  but  it  is  not  certain 
that  he  formed  one  of  the  tribunal  that  night. 


94  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION       [Lect. 

influence  untold  generations  that  were  yet 
to  come — a  condemnation  which  meant  the 
rejection  by  the  Sanhedrin  of  their  Messiah 
in  the  name  of,  and  before  the  whole  Jewish 
nation,  and  that,  after  a  trial  that  was 
illegal  in  every  detail. 

At  this  point  the  meeting  was  adjourned 
until  the  early  morning,  when  Christ  was 
led  before  the  whole  Council — not  to  be 
retried — but  merely  to  give  an  appearance 
of  legality  to  the  former  proceedings,  for 
the  decision  to  condemn  must  not  be  arrived 
at  during  the  night  (see  p.  yS). 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Great  Sanhedrin 
could  not  meet  until  after  the  offering  of  the 
morning  sacrifice,  neither  —  presuming  that 
the  crucifixion  took  place  on  the  Friday — 
could  they  sit  legally  on  that  day,  being  that 
on  which  the  Paschal  Lamb  was  eaten  ;  nor 
had  they  the  right  to  pass  the  final  sentence 
of  death  upon  a  cause  which  had  been  tried 
that  very  day  (see  p.  79)/ 

To  all  intents  and  purposes  the  judges 
contented  themselves  with  the  mere  repeti- 
tion of  the  question  asked  a  few  hours 
earlier,  "  If  thou  art  the  Christ,  tell  us,"  to 

The  Jewish  day  was  reckoned  from  sunset  to  sunset. 


II.]  THE    SECOND   CONDEMNATION  95 

which  He  calmly  answered,  "  If  I  do  tell  you, 
ye  will  not  believe  Me."  "Art  thou  then 
the  Son  of  God  ? "  they  once  more  demanded, 
to  which  question,  "  Ye  say  that  I  am,"  was 
His  quiet  reply.  On  the  face  of  it  the 
answer  looks  evasive,  but  in  reality  it  is  far 
from  it.  It  was  once  more  an  illegal  demand 
by  the  judges  for  a  confession,  which  the 
law  emphatically  forbade  ;  and  the  "  Ve  say 
so,"  was  the  gentle  reminder  that  the  duty 
of  the  judges  was  to  ask  the  witnesses  (His 
accusers)  to  come  forward  and  make  their 
charge,  and  not  the  Prisoner.  Again  the 
Council  declared  that  He  blasphemed  God, 
and  they  ratified  the  judgment  passed  at  the 
former  session. 

Thus,  for  the  second  time,  the  Jewish 
nation  by  the  voice  of  its  rulers  rejected 
the  Messiah. 

Jesus  Christ  was  condemned  to  death  for 
blasphemy  ;  because  on  a  confession  illegally 
extorted  from  Him,  He  admitted  that  He 
was  the  Son  of  God. 

According  to  Maimonides  it  was  contrary 
to  Jewish  law  to  sentence  a  prisoner  to  death 
on  his  own  confession.  Salvador  says  upon 
this  point :    *'  Notre  loi  ne  condamne  jamais 


96  THE   TRIAL  AND   CONDEMNATION      [Lect. 

sur  le  simple  aveu  de  I'accuse."  And  the 
Rabbi  Bartenora  in  a  note  to  De  Syn.y  vi.  2 
writes  :  "  It  is  a  fundamental  principle  with 
us  that  no  one  can  damage  himself  by  what 
he  says  during-  judgment."  Cocceius  also 
states  "  Ita  tenent  Magistri,  neminem  ex 
propria  confessione  aut  prophetse  vaticinio 
esse  neci  dandum." 

Now  comes  the  question,  What  constituted 
Blasphemy  ? 

In  its  earlier  sense  it  was  an  offence  or 
insult  against  God.  In  its  later  and  more 
developed  meaning  it  became  any  form  of 
offence  which  actively  or  constructively  set 
itself  in  opposition  to  or  "  struck  at "  Jehovah 
— the  invisible  though  potential  king  of  the 
Jewish  theocracy.  At  the  same  time  the 
sacred  name,  the  tetragrammaton  JHVH 
must  be  mentioned.  "  Nemo  tenctur  blas- 
phemus  nisi  expressit  nomen."^  Practically 
it  was  "Crimen  laesse  majestatis  divinse," 
i,e.,  treason  against  the  Deity. 

Looking  at  the  purely  legal  aspect  of  the 
case,  and  putting  aside  all  theological  mean- 
ings   which    have     been    attached    to    the 
expression  Son  of  God,  it  is  quite  clear  that 
'  De  Syn.^  vii.  6,  11. 


II.]  REJECTION    OF    THE  '  MESSIAH  97 

there  was  no  high  treason  against  Jehovah 
in  claiming  to  be  the  Messiah,  nor  even  in 
asserting  Sonship  with  God  H'lmseU provided 
that  it  cotild  be  proved.  While,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  outrageous  audacity  of  making 
such  a  stupendous  claim,  and  not  being  able 
to  substantiate  it,  would  constitute  "Crimen 
Isesae  majestatis  divinae "  in  the  highest 
degree. 

The  Sanhedrin  were  in  duty  bound  to 
consider  the  Messianic  identity  of  the 
Accused.  There  was  every  reason  why  the 
claim  should  be  fully  and  openly  weighed, 
for  Scripture,  prophecy,  tradition  and  the 
whole  feeling  of  the  nation  pointed  to  the 
speedy  appearance  of  the  Messiah. 

But  the  problem  was  not  even  for  one 
m'oment  considered  ;  the  Messiah  was 
summarily  rejected  as  a  blasphemer,  and 
sentenced  to  death. 

His  judges  sought  pretexts  for  condemning 
Him  and  not  proofs  of  His  guilt,  and  they 
undoubtedly  hurried  the  trial  for  fear  of 
a  popular  demonstration  in   His  favour. 

It  has  been  very  ably  contended  that  the 
Sanhedrin  had  no  legal  power  to  try  and 
pass  sentence  of  death  upon   Jesus   Christ ; 

N 


gS  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION        [Lect. 

and  it  is  a  contention  which  must  receive 
attention.  Rosadi  says  :  "  The  sole  authority 
that  could  try  Jesus,  arrest  and  examine 
Him  and  render  Him  amenable  to  the  con- 
sequences of  His  alleged  offence,"  was  the 
Roman  Procurator ;  and  he  quotes  Car- 
mignani  and  Lemann  to  back  up  his  opinion. 
Dupin  also  holds  that  the  "  Jewish  court  had 
no  right  to  try  for  grave  or  at  least  capital 
crimes  at  all "  ;  that  their  procedure  was  a 
usurpation. 

On  the  other  hand,  Mommsen  declares 
that  they  had  every  right  to  do  so,  and 
Salvador  the  learned  Spanish  Rabbi,  says  : 
"  The  Jews  retained  the  faculty  of  trying 
cases  according  to  their  own  law,  but  it 
was  only  the  Roman  Procurator  that  had 
executive  power.  No  culprit  could  be 
executed  without  his  consent."  Maimonides 
and  Rabbinowicz  are  also  of  this  opinion. 

Around  this  much  vexed  question  there 
has  grown  up  a  perfect  mountain  of  literature, 
and  there  is  no  doubt  that  even  now  opinions 
vary  considerably,  but  there  are  a  few  points, 
more  perhaps  of  common-sense  than  of  law, 
that  may  be  taken  into  account,  in  trying 
to  arrive  at  a  decision. 


II.]  JEWISH     PRIVILEGES  99 

I.  Christ  was  tried  for  an  ecclesiastical 
offence  ;  and  it  seems  to  be  fairly  established 
that  the  Romans  in  matters  affecting  religious 
questions  allowed  the  Jews  the  right  of  trial 
in  first  instance,  retaining  for  themselves  the 
right  of  recognitio  did  they  wish  to  exercise 
it.  It  was  an  understood  thing,  of  course, 
that  the  Roman  Procurator  alone  could 
actually  deliver  over  a  prisoner  to  death. 
TYiQ  jtis  gladii  passed  away  from  the  Jewish 
people  with  the  advent  of  the  Roman  power. 

II.  Annas  the  ex-high  priest,  had  been 
deposed  only  a  few  years  before  by  Pilate's 
predecessor  for  putting  certain  prisoners  to 
death  during  his  absence.  It  is  hardly 
likely  that  the  Sanhedrin  by  stretching 
their  privileges  again  would  have  so  soon 
risked  a  curtailment  of  them. 

While  there  was  no  concordat  between  the 
Jews  and  the  Romans,  the  latter  undoubtedly 
allowed  the  conquered  nation  to  exercise 
their  own  religion  and  carry  out  their 
ecclesiastical  and  ceremonial  law  within 
their  own  borders :  and  so  long  as  there 
was  no  infringement  of  the  prerogatives  of 
Imperial  Caesar  a  fair  amount  both  of  freedom 
and  power  were  left  to   the   Sanhedrin.     It 


lOO  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION        [Lect. 

was  ever  the  policy  of  Rome  in  dealing  with 
her  colonies  and  foreign  dependencies  to 
allow  great  latitude  to  their  ruling  officials 
in  the  matter  of  religious  questions. 

From  a  Roman  point  of  view  the  Jews 
had  no  rights,  but  they  certainly  were 
allowed  privileges. 

III.  If  the  Sanhedrin  had  exceeded  their 
privileges,  Pilate  would  certainly  have  tried 
the  whole  case  de  novo  with  a  formal  Roman 
trial ;  and  at  the  same  time  would  un- 
doubtedly have   manifested  his  displeasure. 

IV.  It  is  generally  conceded  by  the  greater 
number  of  writers,  that  during  the  troublous 
period  of  the  Hasmonaeans,  certain  modifica- 
tions crept  into  the  legal  practices  of  the 
Jews,  some  of  which  were  done  away  with 
under  Roman  rule.  Therefore,  in  judging 
the  conduct  of  the  Sanhedrin,  we  must 
make  a  little  allowance  for  the  regulations 
of  the  Mishna  not  being  strictly  adhered  to. 
Herod  I.,  King  of  Judaea  in  B.C.  40,  the 
first  Roman  successor  of  the  Hasmonaeans, 
was  very  jealous  of  the  Sanhedrin,  and 
tried  to  curtail  their  privileges.  After  the 
deposition  of  Archelaus   in  a.d.    6  and   the 


11.]  LAWLESSNESS    OF    THE    JEWS  lOI 

appointment  of  procurators  much  of  their 
ecclesiastical  and  municipal  power  was 
restored  to  them  ;  but  in  matters  imperial 
and  political  the  Jews  were  eminently 
the  conquered  people,  from  whom  Rome 
brooked  neither  suggestion  nor  interference. 

Jerusalem  was  practically  governed  by 
the  priestly  party,  and  therefore  by  the 
Sadducees  who  were  a  political  set,  it 
being  clearly  understood  that  they  in  no 
way  infringed  their  privileges,  duly  paid  the 
imperial  taxes,  avoided  any  contravention  of 
Roman  laws,  and  kept  good  order  within 
the  city.  Close  to  the  Temple  stood  the 
fortress  of  Antonia  in  which  six  thousand 
soldiers  are  said  to  have  been  always 
quartered  1  with  the  main  force  of  the 
legionaries  at  Csesarea  Stratonis  near  by, 
so  that  any  breach  of  the  peace  or  case 
of  maladministration,  at  once  met  with 
summary  punishment.  The  Jews  were 
notorious  for  their  lawlessness  and  for 
being  ever  on  the  verge  of  revolt ;  in 
fact,  so  little  did  the  Romans  trust  them 
that  at  the  Feasts  a  strong  body  of  troops 
was  always  brought  into  Jerusalem. 

Taking   all   these   points    into   considera- 
^  Josephus,  IVars,  v.  5,  8. 


I02  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION        [Lect. 

tion  it  is  not  likely  that  the  Sanhedrin  or 
Caiaphas  would  have  desired  to  break  their 
friendship  with  Pilate.  The  Jewish  rulers 
had  been  left  the  privilege  of  trying  and 
condemning  a  prisoner  for  an  ecclesiastical 
offence,  and  they  used  it,  but  they  could 
go  no  further.  They  might  verbally  consign 
Christ  to  the  most  cruel  death  you  can 
possibly  imagine,  but  they  had  not  the  power 
to  hurt  one  single  hair  of  His  head.  Csesar 
alone  by  the  mouth  of  his  Procurator  could 
issue  the  death  warrant,  and  therefore  to 
Pilate  must  the  Sanhedrin  have  recourse  for 
permission  to  put  Jesus  Christ  to  death. 


Pontius    Pilate. 

"Colui  che  fece  per  viltate  il  gran  rifiuto 
A  Deo  spiacento  ed  ai  nemici  sui." 

At  the  time  of  the  birth  of  Jesus  Christ 
Syria  wafe  divided  into  three  parts  for 
governmental  purposes.  Idumsea,  Samaria 
and  Judaea  were  administered  by  Archelaus 
until  A.D.  6,  when  Augustus  deposed  and 
banished  him  to  Gaul — Publius  Sulpicius 
Quirinus  succeeding  him.^     In   Galilee  and 

'  Luke  ii.  2. 


II.]  THE    ROMAN    GOVERNOR  IO3 

Peraa  Herod  Antipas  was  tetrarch  until 
Caligula  relegated  him  in  a.d,  39  to 
Lugdunum  ;  and  Philip  governed  the  barren 
regions  of  the  extreme  northern  border. 
From  the  time  of  Quirinus  Judsea  was 
placed  under  the  administration  of  Rome 
itself,  as  a  province  of  Syria,  and  a 
Procurator  Ccssaris  cum  potestafe,  armed 
with  plenary  powers,  governed  the  province 
in  the  name  of,  and  was  directly  responsible 
to  the  Imperator  himself.^  In  Jerusalem 
the  high  priest  in  conjunction  with  the 
Sanhedrin  presided  over  purely  Jewish 
affairs  and  matters  ecclesiastical. 

Lucius  Pontius  Pilate,  the  Procurator 
Caesaris  in  Judsea  at  the  time  of  Christ's 
trial,  is  one  of  those  characters  concerning 
whom  but  little  historical  is  known,  yet  of 
whom  any  number  of  traditional  stories  are 
told.  It  is  said,  but  on  doubtful  authority, 
that  he  was  a  Spaniard,  born  in  Seville. 
He  was  a  soldier  and  the  son  of  a  dis- 
tinguished soldier,  and  after  fighting  in 
Germany  under  Germanicus  went  to  Rome 
on  amusement  bent.  While  there  he  fell 
in  love  with  and  married  Claudia  Procula, 
the    illegitimate    daughter    of    Claudia    the 

^  Tacitus,  Annals^  ii.  66  ;  Suetonius,  Tiberius^  22, 


I04  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION        [Lkct. 

third    wife    of    Tiberius,    and    the    grand- 
daughter of  Augustus  Caesar. 

When  appointed  Governor  of  Judaea 
Pontius  Pilate  asked  for,  and  obtained  the 
unusual  permission  to  take  his  wife  with 
him.  Of  his  rule  in  Judsea  we  know 
hardly  anything  authentic.  We  learn  from 
Josephus  that  he  annoyed  the  Jews  by 
causing  the  insignia  of  Caesar  to  be  set 
up  in  the  sacred  city,  and  that  again 
later  he  incurred  their  hatred  by  appro- 
priating some  of  the  Temple  funds  for 
the  useful  and  highly  necessary  work  of 
bringing  water  into  the  city,  a  work  which 
met  with  no  sympathy  from  them.  The 
water  supply  of  Jerusalem  was  at  the  best 
of  times  but  scanty,  and  with  the  greatly 
increased  population  caused  by  the  Roman 
occupation,  wholly  inadequate.  He  is  said 
to  have  also  dealt  severely  with  the 
Samarita'ns,  who  having  been  beguiled  by 
a  foolish  impostor  promising  to  produce 
the  sacred  vessels  hidden  in  Mount  Gerizim, 
armed  themselves  to  assemble  there  in  force. 
Pilate  knowing  the  turbulent  nature  of  the 
people,  and  being  responsible  for  the  main- 
tenance of  peace  and  quiet,  stole  a  march 
upon  them  in  order  to  prevent  a  riot ;  and 


II.]  Pilate's   unpopularity  105 

on  the  arrival  of  the  Samaritans  at  the 
Mount,  they  found  it  surrounded  by  Roman 
soldiers,  who  dispersed  the  mob,  capturing 
many,  and  putting  the  ringleaders  to  death. ^ 
Owing  to  representations  made  to  Vitellius 
the  Governor  of  Syria,  Pilate  was  ordered 
to  Rome  to  give  an  account  of  himself  to 
Csesar,  but  on  his  arrival  Tiberius  was  dead. 
Cassiodorus  says  that  he  was  banished  to 
Vena  Gallica,  where  he  died.  Two  letters 
and  a  report  are  extant  purporting  to  be 
from  Pontius  Pilate  to  Tiberius,  relatinor  to 
the  trial  of  Jesus  Christ,  but  they  are  in 
Greek,  not  Latin,  and  though  they  are 
interesting  up  to  a  certain  point  can  only 
be  regarded  as  apocryphal.  Beyond  these 
few  facts,  and  the  conduct  of  the  Procurator 
himself  towards  Christ  as  shown  in  the 
Gospels,  we  have  no  clue  to  the  personality 
of  the  man.  He  has  been  made  the  object 
of  unmitigated  vituperation  throughout  the 
ages,  alike  from  ecclesiastics  and  historians ; 
and  Josephus  and  Philo  his  biographers,  are 
so  violent  in  their  language  concerning  him 
that  we  are  driven  to  the  conclusion  that 
many  of  their  statements  cannot  be  accepted 
as  historical. 

^  Josephus,  Anitq.i  xviii.  ;  4,  i. 


Io6  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION        [Lect. 

Pilate  was  placed  in  a  position  of  very 
great  difficulty,  and  one  requiring  much 
firmness  and  decision,  and  he  failed,  and 
it  is  not  easy  at  this  distance  of  time  to 
weigh  impartially  and  accurately  the  guilt 
of  the  heathen  governor.  I  hold  no  brief 
for  Pontius  Pilate,  and  I  have  not  the 
slightest  intention  of  whitewashing-  his 
character,  but  at  least  let  us  be  fair  to  the 
man ;  and  while  we  sternly  condemn  the 
injustice  of  Caiaphas  and  the  Sanhedrin,  let 
us  not  fail  in  seeing  that  justice  is  meted 
out  even  to  Pilate  the  failure. 

In  judging  of  his  conduct  towards  Christ 
we  have  to  remember  how  different  a  view 
of  the  matter  the  Pagan  governor  would 
have  taken  from  either  the  Sanhedrin,  or 
a  Christian  council.  Pilate's  first  and  fore- 
most duty  was  to  preserve  order  in  a 
conquered  country  whose  inhabitants  were 
proverbial  .for  their  disaffection  and  insub- 
ordination, and  were  moreover  a  people 
whom  he  cordially  disliked.  The  religions 
of  the  two  races  were  also  fundamentally 
antagonistic,  though  never  likely  to  clash, 
for  Rome,  while  worshipping  at  her  own 
altars  in  Judaea,  left  the  Jews  in  peace  to 
serve   Jehovah    in  their  own  land,  and    the 


II.]  PILATE  S    DIFFICULTY  I07 

latter  for  their  part  never  desired  to  prosyle- 
tise.  Consequently  Pilate  knew  nothing  of 
the  Jewish  faith  and  probably  cared  less. 

He  was  a  low-born  Roman  soldier  of  no 
mental  culture,  who  would  be  completely 
ignorant  as  to  what  blasphemy  against  God 
meant,  or  what  a  vital  question  was  involved 
in  the  assumption  by  the  Prisoner  of  the 
title  "  Son  of  God."  His  duty  as  Procurator 
was  to  take  into  consideration  two  points. 
Was  the  Prisoner  guilty  of  treason  against 
Csesar,  and  was  He,  by  His  religious  doctrines 
and  teaching,  stirring  up  revolt  and  sedition 
among  His  fellow-countrymen?  The  first 
of  these  Pilate  dismissed  with  a  verdict  of 
Not  Guilty ;  and  the  second  was  not  even 
worth  a  thought. 

There  was  no  injustice  nor  even  unfairness 
in  sending  Christ  to  Herod — the  superior 
officer — though  legally  there  was  no  necessity 
for  it.  It  was  merely  trying  to  shirk  responsi- 
bility under  the  cloak  of  deference. 

Pilate's  failure  as  a  judge  was  that  he  had 
not  strength  of  mind  to  carry  out  his  just 
verdict — "  I  find  no  crime  in  Him." 

So  in  the  grey  dawn  of  that  early  April 
morning,  the    chief  priests,  with   the  elders 


I08  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION        [Lect. 

and  scribes,  accompanied  by  a  crowd  of 
Jews/  passed  with  their  Prisoner  across  the 
Temple  precincts.  Opinions  differ  as  to 
which  palace  Pilate  was  at  this  time  in- 
habiting. It  was  not  likely  to  have  been — 
as  many  suggest — the  Castle  of  Antonia,  as 
that  contained  the  barracks  and  so  was 
not  at  all  suitable  as  the  residence  of  a 
Roman  lady  of  Imperial  birth.  It  may  have 
been  the  beautiful  palace  built  by  Herod 
the  Great,  which  with  its  fine  marble  court 
would  make  an  excellent  place  for  Roman 
open-air  trials.  This  lay  near  the  present 
gardens  of  the  Armenian  patriarch,  and  was 
connected  with  the  Temple  by  a  causeway 
across  the  Tyropaean  Valley.  As  Herod,  the 
tetrarch  of  Galilee,  had  come  to  Jerusalem 
for  the  Feast,  it  is  not  impossible  that  Pilate 
wishing  to  do  him  honour  may  have  ceded 
the  palace  to  him  for  temporary  use,  and 
have  gone  himself  with  his  consort  into  the 
old  palace  of  the  Hasmonseans  built  on  a 
fine  spur  on  the  west  side  of  the  Temple, 
and  therefore  quite  easy  of  access. 

At  any  rate  one  thing  is  certain,  and  that 
is  that  the  Prsetorium  was  wherever  Pilate  at 
that  moment  resided,  the  name  being  applied 

'  Luke  xxiii.  4. 


ir.]  Pilate's  question  log 

in  the  first  instance  to  the  Praetor's  tent  of 
older  and  simpler  days,  then  to  the  military 
council,  and  finally,  after  the  days  of  Augustus, 
to  the  building"  where  the  Procurator  was  at 
that  time.  Into  the  palace  court  Christ's 
judges,  who  had  not  hesitated  to  break  the 
law  on  most  vital  points,  had  scruples  against 
entering.  Had  they  done  so  they  would 
have  been  defiled,  and  unable  to  eat  the 
Passover.^  So  standing  before  the  balustrade 
which  separated  the  palace  from  the  Temple 
precincts,  they  awaited  the  moment  when 
the  bema  or  portable  chair,  in  which  the 
Roman  magistrates  sat  when  administering 
justice,  should  be  put  in  place,  and  the 
Procurator  appear. 

Pilate  as  a  concession  to  Jewish  religious 
feelings  "  went  out "  to  them,  and  at  once 
with  the  true  Roman  spirit  of  fair  play 
demanded:  "What  accusation  bring  ye?" 
The  Sanhedrin  evaded  the  question  by 
replying  that  He  was  an  "evil-doer,"  literally 
a  malefactor,  upon  which  Pilate,  evidently 
thinking  that  it  was  merely  some  local  or 
religious  offence,  bade  the  Jews  judge  Him 
according  to  their  own  law.     He  probably 

'  This  points  to  the  crucifixion  not  having  taken  place  on 
the  Friday. 


no  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION        [Lect. 

thought  as  did — later  on — Annseus  GalHo, 
the  Pro-consul  of  Achaia,  that  "  if  it  were 
a  matter  of  wrong  or  wicked  villainy  O  ye 
Jews,  reason  would  that  I  should  bear  with 
you,  but  if  it  be  a  question  of  words  and 
names  and  of  your  own  law,  see  ye  to  it, 
I  will  be  no  judge  in  these  matters."^  This 
brought  the  accusers  to  their  bearings,  and 
they  were  obliged  to  return  the  galling 
answer:  "It  is  not  permissible  for  us  to 
put  any  one  to  death."  It  was  the  bitter 
admission  unwillingly  wrung  from  them, 
that  they  were  a  conquered  people,  and 
could  not  execute  their  own  law.  It  at 
once  gave  Pilate  a  clue  to  the  whole  situa- 
tion, though  his  question:  "What  accusa- 
tion ?  "  still  remained  unanswered.  My  belief 
is  that  Caiaphas,  being  a  friend  of  Pilate, 
hoped  that  the  Procurator  would  have 
accepted  the  judgment  of  the  Sanhedrin 
without  fjurther  enquiry,  and  signed  the 
necessary  permission,  or  perhaps  he  trusted 
that  out  of  consideration  for  their  religious 
scruples  at  the  Passover  time,  and  knowing 
how  prone  the  people  were  to  riot  during 
the  Feasts,  Pilate  would,  for  the  sake  of 
quiet  and   order,  have  at  once   condemned 

'  Acts  xiii.,  14,  15. 


IL]  THE    ACCUSATION  III 

the  Prisoner  to  death.  The  high  priest 
may  also  have  feared  a  reversal  of  the 
sentence.  It  is  evident  from  the  first  that 
the  Roman  governor  meant  to  use  his  right 
of  recognitio,  all  the  more  so  that  he  could 
not  obtain  a  direct  answer  to  his  question. 
They  "accused  Him  of  many  things,"  but 
nothing  defmite. 

At  last  the  Procurator  succeeded  in  getting 
a  statement  of  the  Prisoner's  crime,  but  the 
Ground    of  the    accusation   had    once    more 

o 

shifted.  This  time  it  was  not  Sorcery  and 
Blasphemy  with  which  Christ  was  charged, 
but  with  treason  against  great  Caesar  him- 
self— a  crime  which  the  rulers  knew  would 
immediately  compel  the  attention  of  the 
Procurator. 

a.  "We     found     Him    perverting    the 

nation." 

b.  "Forbidding     to     give     tribute     to 

Caesar." 

c.  "  Saying  He  is  Christ  a  king." 

Having  first  accused  Him  in  a  vague  way 
of  evil  doing,  they  now  definitely  state  evil 
speaking  in  three  ways. 

The  first  count  Pilate  cared  nothing 
about ;  it  did  not  matter  one  iota  to  Imperial 


112  THE   TRIAL   AND    CONDEMNATION         [Lect. 

Rome  that  a  religious  fanatic  should  pervert 
the  Jewish  nation. 

The  second  was  too  obviously  false  to 
stand ;  it  had  already  been  brought  up  and 
disproved. 

The  third,  if  true,  was  very  serious  ;  it  was 
nothing  short  of  Crimen  lessee  Majestatis — 
a  crime  which  Tiberius  punished  with  the 
utmost  severity,  and  concerning  which  had 
even  issued  an  edict  that  verbal  statements 
as  well  as  overt  acts  were  to  be  counted  as 
treason,  while  to  use  the  sacred  name  of  Caesar 
was  to  give  a  yet  more  serious  aspect  to  the 
case.^  If  Christ  had  been  a  Roman  citizen, 
the  mere  verbal  accusation  would  not  have 
availed  against  Him  as  a  case  of  treason 
must  be  attested  by  the  production  of  the 
written  libel ;  but  not  being  able  to  claim,  as 
did  St  Paul,  the  privilege  :  "  Civis  Romanus 
sum,"  He,  as  one  of  a  conquered  nation 
was  defenceless,  and  could  only  trust  to 
the  justice  of  His  judge. 

Having"    extracted    a    definite    statement 

of  crime  from  the  Prisoner's  accusers,  Pilate 

proceeded    at    once    to    put   the   right   and 

natural  question  :    "  Art    thou   the   King  of 

*  Tacitus,  Annuls^  iii.  39. 


II.]  NO    OPPOSITION    TO    C.<€SAR  II3 

the  Jews?"  to  which  Christ  repHed,  "Thou 
sayest."  Comparing  the  four  Gospels,  it 
seems  as  if  this  interrogation  and  reply 
must  have  taken  place  in  the  hearing  of 
the  chief  priests,  elders,  and  the  multitude 
who  were  accusing  Him,  some  of  one  thing 
and  some  of  another.  Pilate  in  despair  at 
getting  at  the  truth  of  the  matter  with  all 
the  confusion  going  on  round  him,  appealed 
to  the  Prisoner  Himself  and  finally  with- 
drew Him  into  the  Praetorium,  where  he 
could  quietly  investigate  the  charge.  The 
judge  again  put  the  same  question:  "Art 
thou  the  King  of  the  Jews?"  Christ's 
answer  when  alone  with  the  Procurator  is 
most  interesting.  He  first  asks  His  judge 
a  question :  "  Sayest  thou  this  of  thyself, 
or  did  others  tell  it  thee  of  Me?"  In  other 
words  Christ  asks  His  judge  :  "  Do  you  as 
the  representative  of  Caesar  ask  Me,  if  I 
stand  here  at  your  judgment  seat  guilty  of 
attacking  the  Roman  power  and  claiming 
to  be  the  King  of  the  Jews  in  the  place  of 
the  Imperator ;  or  is  it  merely  because 
others  tell  you  I  am  the  King  of  the  Jews 
that  you  ask  Me  ?  " 

It  was  but  a  few  days  before  that  Christ 
had   sternly   bidden    the  spies   sent   by    the 


114  THE   TRIAL  AND   CONDEMNATION         [Lect. 

high  priests  and  elders  to  "take  hold 
of  His  speech"  to  "render  to  Csesar  the 
things  which  are  Caesar's,"  making  it  quite 
clear  that  the  kingdom  over  which  He 
proclaimed  Himself  a  King  was  not  to 
be  established  by  means  of  the  overthrow 
of  the  powers  that  be.  He  had,  in  fact, 
pointed  out  that  although  in  days  to  come 
Christianity  might  find  itself  in  collision 
with  empires  and  powers  in  high  places, 
it  was  no  part  of  His  plan  of  campaign  to 
destroy  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  in  order 
to  establish  His  own.  His  kinordom  was 
not  to  be  founded  upon  the  ruins  of  law- 
fully constituted  authority. 

Pilate  —  a  Roman  —  naturally  retorted  : 
"Am  I  a  jew  yo2ir  authorities  have  given 
you  up  to  me,  what  is  it  really  that  you  have 
done?"  Practically,  if  Christ  of  Himself 
claimed  to  be  the  King  of  the  Jews,  then 
there  might  be  political  mischief  lurking 
behind,  and  treason  against  Caesar  might 
have  been  committed ;  but  if  others  said 
He  was  the  King  of  the  Jews,  then 
probably  it  was  nothing  but  yet  another  of 
those  fanatical  religious  movements  which 
were  always  stirring  in  Judaea,  and  Pilate 
could    dismiss    the     Prisoner    as    innocent. 


II. 1  THE    JUST    VERDICT  II5 

Christ's  reply  was  at  once  oriental  and 
symbolical :  "  My  kingdom  is  not  of  this 
kosnios,  else  would  my  servants  fight  that  I 
should  not  be  delivered  into  the  hands  of 
the  Jews."  Pilate  still  puzzled,  reiterated 
the  question:  "Art  thou  then  a  King?" 
and  Christ  admitted  that  He  was  a  King, 
and  was  born  into  the  world  to  bear  witness 
to  the  truth.  Pilate  more  puzzled  still,  and 
still  less  understanding  the  Prisoner's 
meaning,  but  quite  convinced  that  here  was 
no  political  crime  to  be  punished,  exclaimed 
hopelessly:  "What  is  the  truth  of  the 
matter  ? "  and  going  out  to  the  angry  crowd 
said:  "I  find  no  crime  in  Him."  It  was 
quite  evident  to  the  prosaic  and  unlettered 
mind  of  the  Roman  governor  that  this  self- 
styled  King  was  but  the  imaginary  ruler 
of  a  phantom  kingdom — a  product  of  his 
brain  alone.  He  might  be  a  fanatic  or  a 
madman,  or  even  both,  but  He  was  certainly 
no  evil-doer,  nor  was  He  plotting  against 
Caesar. 

The  charge  had  broken  down — Pilate  was 
bound  to  acquit  the  Prisoner,  and  he  did 
so.^  Thus  far  the  Procurator  had  been  an 
absolutely  just  judge. 

^  John  xviii.  38. 


Il6  THE   TRIAL  AND   CONDEMNATION         [Lect. 

The  verdict  "I  find  no  crime  in  Him" 
appears  to  have  raised  a  perfect  storm,  and 
priests  and  people  alike  clamoured  for  the 
death  sentence.  Matthew  and  John  state 
that  Pilate  now  proposed  the  alternative 
release  of  Jesus  or  Barabbas  the  murderer. 
Mark  says  that  the  multitude  "began  to 
ask  him  (Pilate)  to  do  as  he  was  wont  to 
do  unto  them,"  and  that  the  chief  priests 
stirred  up  the  people  "that  he  should  rather 
release  Barabbas  unto  them "  begging  that 
Jesus  might  be  crucified.  It  is  from  this 
point — when  Pilate  allowed  popular  clamour 
to  interfere  with  his  right  judgment — that 
he  began  that  hopelessly  downward  course 
of  vacillation  and  bluster,  cowardice  and 
cruelty,  compromise  and  subterfuge  which 
have  stamped  him  for  all  time  as  a  weak 
and  incapable  judge,  who,  in  a  moment  of 
acute  crisis  and  desperate  dilemma,  set  aside 
man's  crowning  gift  of  free  will. 

He  tried  to  temporise  between  what  he 
knew  to  be  right  on  the  one  side  and  felt  to 
be  wrong  on  the  other  ;  he  decided  neither 
for  Christ  nor  Csesar,  he  washed  his  hands  to 
escape  the  difficulty  of  making  an  unpopular 
decision,  and  threw  the  burden  of  responsi- 
bility  upon    the   prosecutors.      He    did    not 


II.]  REFUSAL   OF    BARABBAS  II7 

at  once  veto  the  injustice  of  condemning 
an  obviously  innocent  man  and  set  Him 
forthwith  at  liberty,  but  pronouncing  Him 
innocent  he  tortured  Him  hoping  to  get 
the  people  to  be  content  with  thus  much 
punishment. 

Obviously,  from  the  Procurator's  own 
lips,  he  recognised  where  the  path  of 
justice  and  duty  lay,  but  he  chose  deliber- 
ately to  evade  it.  To  him  one  feels  that 
Dante's  words  rightly  apply  "  che  fece  per 
viltate  il  gran  rifiuto."  W^  ^2.^ par  excellence 
the  type  of  those  feeble  characters  whom 
justice  and  mercy  equally  despise,  who  side 
neither  with  God,  nor  man,  nor  the  devil, 
but  who  are  so  morally  invertebrate  as  to 
be  incapable  of  using  their  free  will  when 
a  vital  emergency  occurs. 

The  Jews  refused  Barabbas,  and  Pilate 
feebly  asked  what  he  should  do  with  their 
King.  They  all  cried  out  begging  for  a 
Roman  death ;  thus  endeavouring  to  shift 
the  difficulty  of  putting  a  malefactor  to  death 
at  the  Passover  on  to  the  Romans.  St 
Matthew  xxvii.  19  here  mentions  the  dream 
of  Claudia,  which  reads  very  much  as  if  It 
were  an  interpolation,  for  it  breaks  into  the 
sense  of  the  context,  and  has  been  obviouslv 


Il8  THE  TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION         [Lect. 

dragged  In  ;  verse  20  clearly  should  follow 
immediately  after  verse  18  in  order  to 
complete  the  episode. 

Findinor  that  the  offer  of  Barabbas  was 
rejected,  and  that  his  question,  "Why,  what 
evil  hath  He  done  ?  "  only  seemed  to  increase 
the  tumult,  Pilate  called  for  water  and 
washed  his  hands  in  the  sight  of  the  angry 
multitude.  This  was  a  Jewish  custom,  and 
implied  that  the  Roman  Procurator  in  con- 
demning "this  righteous  man"  made  his 
own  fellow-countrymen  responsible  for  the 
punishment  that  should  befall  him.  The 
Mosaic  law  directs  that  the  washing  of 
hands  shall  be  accompanied  by  these  words  : 
"  Our  hands  have  not  shed  this  blood, 
neither  have  our  eyes  seen  it.  Forgive, 
O  Lord,  thy  people  Israel  whom  thou  hast 
redeemed,  and  suffer  not  innocent  blood 
to  remain  in  the  midst  of  thy  people 
Israel." 

I  cannot  agree  with  those  writers  who 
think  that  in  washing  his  hands  Pilate 
deliberately  meant  to  insult  the  Jewish 
nation  by  a  public  travesty  of  their  own 
religious  ceremonial ;  rather  was  it  that  the 
uproar  was  so  great — loud  voices  vehemently 
•accusing   Him    and   asking   that    He   might 


II.]  THE   REMISSION   TO   HEROD  II9 

be  crucified — that  the  grovernor  could  get 
no  hearing,  and  so  conveyed  by  a  sign 
which  all  understood,  the  intelligence  which 
he  could  not  make  audible  by  word  of 
mouth. 

Once  more  the  Jews  relentlessly  insisted 
upon  the  Prisoner's  death,  and  accepted  the 
responsibility  thus  thrown  upon  them  in 
those  terrible  words :  "His  blood  be  on 
us  and  on  our  children."  ^ 

St  Luke  alone  gives  the  remission  of 
Christ  to  Herod.  The  chief  priests  seeing 
that  Pilate  persisted  in  finding  "no  fault 
with  this  man "  waxed  yet  more  vehement, 
and  again  changed  the  accusation,  "  He 
stirreth  up  all  Jewry  from  Galilee  unto  this 
place."  Now  Herod  Antipas,  the  Governor 
of  Syria,  was,  according  to  his  custom,  in 
Jerusalem  for  the  Passover,  and  the  Pro- 
curator caught  at  this  fact  as  an  excuse  to 
escape  from  enforcing  the  just  verdict  he 
had  already  given.  From  the  Forum 
apprehensionis  he  would  send  the  prisoner 
to  the  Forum  originis  vel  domicilii. 

Legally,  there  was  no  need  to  hand  over  a 
man  arrested  in  Jerusalem  for  offences  com- 
mitted mostly  in  that  city  to  the  jurisdiction 
^  Matt,  xxvii.  25. 


I20  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION         [Lect. 

of  the  governor  of  another  territorial  district ; 
and  Herod  wisely  and  rightly  declined  to 
interfere,  although,  out  of  idle  curiosity, 
he  was  "exceeding  glad  to  see  Jesus," 
who  answered  nothing  to  the  Tetrarch's 
questions.  So  back  once  more  to  the 
Prsetorium  the  chief  priests  and  scribes 
brought  their  Prisoner,  and  once  again 
Pilate  acquitted  Him  ;  "I  having  examined 
Him  found  no  fault  in  Him,  no,  nor  yet 
Herod." 

He  was  innocent,  the  judge  had  pro- 
nounced the  Absolvo,  and  He  should  at 
once  have  been  released ;  instead  of  this, 
Pilate,  by  way  of  temporising,  made  an 
unjust  and  illegal  proposal  :  "  I  will  chastise 
Him  and  release  Him." 

The  four  Evangelists  are  not  quite  in 
agreement  in  their  statements  about  the 
scourging  of  Our  Lord.  St  Luke  does  not 
tell  us  that  it  was  ever  carried  into  effect.^ 
SS.  Matthew  and  Mark  merely  state  that 
when  "  Pilate  had  scourged  Him  he  delivered 
Him  to  be  crucified."  St  John  relates  that 
the  scourging  took  place  earlier  in  the 
morning,  and  was  consequently  independent 
of  the  crucifixion.     As   a    rule,    flagellation 

'  Luke  xxiii.  i6,  22,  25. 


11.]  THE   JEWS    DEMAND    ROMAN    DEATH       121 

was  part  of  the  Roman  death  punishment, 
and  it  would  probably  be  taken  by  the 
multitude  as  an  indication  on  the  part  of 
the  governor  that  he  intended  to  deliver 
up  the  Prisoner.  It  was  so  brutal  a  punish- 
ment that,  according  to  the  classic  writers, 
the  prisoners  sometimes  died  under  it. 

This  compromise  only  increased  the 
clamour  of  priests  and  people  who  "were 
instant  with  loud  voices  asking  that  He 
mieht  be  crucified."  Under  this  renewed 
pressure  the  Roman  governor  exclaimed : 
"Take  ye  Him  and  crucify  Him  for  /  find 
no  crime  in  Him."  It  was  a  last  and  futile 
effort  to  rid  himself  of  the  difficulty  of  making 
up  his  mind  to  do  justice  and  face  the 
possible  revenge  of  an  angry  mob  whom 
he  knew  well  enough  already  hated  him. 
This  half  measure  was  not  at  all  what  the 
multitude  desired.  Their  religious  scruples, 
which  forbade  them  to  pass  into  the 
unhallowed  court  of  the  Praetorium  on  the 
day  of  the  Passover,  would  be  entirely 
outraged  if  required  by  the  heathen  governor 
to  defile  themselves  by  putting  a  criminal 
to  death.  They  had,  as  a  conquered  people, 
been  forced  into  the  bitter  position  of  sub- 
servience to    Rome    in    matters  of  life  and 


122  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION         [Lect- 

death,  and  they  intended  that  Rome's 
representative  should  have  the  entire 
responsibility  of  the  condemnation  and 
execution  of  their  prisoner. 

Is  it  possible  also  that  while  insisting  upon 
a  Roman  death,  which  in  those  days  was 
never  the  fate  of  a  Jewish  subject,  there  may 
have  arisen  deep  down  in  the  minds  of  the 
Sanhedrin  the  uncomfortable  question  as  to 
the  identity  of  their  prisoner.  The  quiet 
dignity  and  the  grand  silence  of  the  Accused 
must  have  struck  even  the  most  prejudiced 
of  His  enemies.  His  was  not  the  bearing 
of  a  criminal,  an  impostor,  or  a  fanatic  ;  even 
to  a  casual  observer  it  must  have  gone  far 
to  prove  His  claim  to  a  kingdom  "not 
from  hence,"  for  no  one  could  have  passed 
through  those  hours  of  storm  and  fury,  of 
insult  and  physical  suffering  with  such  calm- 
ness unless  absolutely  certain  of  the  truth 
of  His  clciim.  It  may  be  that  the  thought 
passed  through  their  minds  that  if  in  future 
days  history  should  prove  that  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  the  despised  Galilsean  peasant- 
teacher,  had  been  —  though  rejected  and 
persecuted — their  Messiah,  the  guilt  of  His 
death  should  not  rest  on  their  nation.  They 
should  be  able   to  point  to  treason  against 


II.]  THIRD   REJECTION   OF  THE   MESSIAH      I23 

great  Caesar  as  the  crime  for  which  He 
was  condemned,  and  crucifixion  by  Roman 
soldiers  as  the  punishment  by  which  He 
died. 

Again  did  Pilate  leave  the  palace  to  appeal 
to  the  people,  but  they  only  insisted  that  by 
Jewish  law  the  Prisoner  ought  to  die  because 
"He  made  Himself  the  Son  of  God" — 
and  then  Pilate  was  afraid.  The  governor's 
last  interview  with  Christ  is  full  of  pathos  ; 
the  cowardice  of  the  judge,  and  the  gentle- 
ness, almost  pity,  of  the  Accused  towards 
him  are  in  striking  contrast  —  while  His 
final  words  to  the  Procurator,  "therefore 
he  that  delivered  Me  unto  thee  hath  the 
greater  sin  "  are  full  of  tenderness  and  for- 
giveness,  nay,  almost  of  excuse. 

"  Upon  which  Pilate  sought  to  release 
Him." 

One  final  shaft  remained  yet  for  the 
Jewish  rulers  to  aim  at  the  Roman  governor, 
and  one  that  they  knew  well  enough  would 
strike  home.  "If  thou  let  this  man  go 
thou  art  not  Caesar's  friend,  whosoever 
maketh  himself  a  king  speaketh  against 
Caesar."  This  was  the  climax — and  Pilate, 
sending  the  Prisoner  out  into  the  open  court, 
himself  followed,  and  seating  himself  upon 


124  THE   TRIAL   AND    CONDEMNATION       [Lect. 

the  beyna  placed  on  the  Lithostroton  or 
tessellated  pavement  that  formed  the  open 
court  in  front  of  the  palace  exclaimed : 
"  Behold  your  King ! "  only  to  be  shouted 
down  with  cries  of  "Away  with  Him, 
crucify  Him."  "  Shall  I  crucify  your  King  ? " 
asked  the  governor,  to  which  the  chief 
priests  replied :  "  We  have  no  king  but 
Caesar." 

For  the  third  time  the  Jewish  nation 
rejected  Jesus  of  Nazareth  as  their  Messiah, 
and  at  the  same  moment  acknowledged  the 
Imperator  of  Rome  —  their  conqueror  —  to 
be  their  king.  How  true  those  words  were 
destined  to  prove  they  doubtless  did  not 
foresee  ;  but  from  that  day  forth  for  nigh 
on  two  thousand  years,  the  Jews  have  been 
in  the  strange  and  anomalous  position  of  a 
race  without  a  leader,  a  nation  without  a 
country,  a  people  under  submission  to  the 
Caesar  in  whose  land  they  dwell  as  strangers 
and  foreigners,  and  among  whose  own 
subjects  they  are  but  at  the  best  of  times 
barely  tolerated. 

Thrice  had  Pilate  declared  the  Prisoner  to 
be  not  guilty  ;  but  now,  overwhelmed  by  the 
fury  of  an  Eastern  mob,  the  weak  and  utterly 
unnerved  Roman  Procurator  was  willing  to 


II.]  THE   CONDEMNATION  1 25 

content  the  people,  and,  without  rescinding 
his  original  verdict,  delivered  the  fateful  con- 
demnation. 

Ibis  ad  Crucem. 

Jesus  Christ  was  condemned  to  death  by 
the  Sanhedrin  for  blasphemy  against  God. 
He  was  arraigned  before  the  Roman  Pro- 
curator on  a  charge  of  Sedition  and  High 
Treason,  of  which  crimes  He  was  proved 
guiltless.  He  was  executed  because  Pontius 
Pilate  wished  to  please  the  Jewish  people. 

There  are  many  writers  who  maintain  that 
the  proceedings  before  Pilate  were  illegal 
from  the  point  of  view  of  Roman  law, 
and  in  proof  thereof  describe  the  elaborate 
organisation  and  lengthy  formalities  of  a 
trial  under  the  Empire. 

They  contend  that  legally  Pilate  should 
have  proclaimed  to  the  multitude,  by  the 
voice  of  the  public  crier,  a  day  on  which  he 
would  consider  the  charges  brought  against 
the  Prisoner,  summoning  also  his  fellow 
citizens  to  come  together  at  the  same  time. 
On  the  day  appointed  the  judge  in  the 
presence  of  the  Prisoner  and  in  open  court 
should   have    announced    the    crime   alleged 


126  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION         [Lect. 

against  Him,  a  statement  of  which  should  also 
have  been  made  in  writing.  The  Sanhedrin 
would  have  then  been  required  to  produce 
their  witnesses  and  the  Accused  his,  when  the 
judge  after  weighing  the  evidence  would 
have  pronounced  judgment  in  either  of  the 
following  terms — Absolvo — Condemno — Non 
liquet,  as  the  case  might  be. 

These  writers  emphasise  the  fact  that  it 
was  not  in  Roman  towns  only  that  these 
regulations  prevailed,  but  in  the  country 
districts  and  conquered  provinces  as  well. 
This  is  undoubtedly  true  so  far  as  the 
Romans  were  themselves  concerned ;  but 
Jesus  Christ  was  not  a  Roman  citizen. 
He  was  a  Jew,  and  not  even  a  Roman 
subject  save  by  conquest,  so  He  could 
not  claim  a  formal  Roman  trial  nor  appeal 
to  Caesar.  His  case — in  its  differences — 
can  in  no  way  be  compared  with  that  of  St 
Paul  before  Felix  and  Festus.  True  it  is 
that  St  Paul  was  proud  to  call  himself  a 
Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews,  and  that  like 
Christ  he  was  arrested  in  Jerusalem ;  but 
unlike  Christ  he  was  a  Roman  freeborn 
citizen  which  privilege  carried  with  it 
"besides  private  rights  (i)  exemption  from 
degrading  punishments,   e.g.,  scourging  and 


Ill  ST   PAUL'S   TRIAL  127 

crucifixion  ;  (2)  right  of  appeal  to  the  emperor 
after  sentence  in  all  cases  ;  (3)  right  to  be 
sent  to  Rome  for  trial  before  the  emperor 
if  charged  with  a  capital  offence  "  [Bernard). 
St  Paul  could  and  did  claim  these  rights. 

A  marked  feature  in  the  policy  of  Rome 
towards  her  conquered  subjects  was  to  judge 
them  as  far  as  possible  according  tO'  their 
own  laws,  and  to  allow  them  the  use  and 
methods  of  their  national  courts ;  and  while 
she  required  her  foreign  delegates  to  execute 
justice  she  allowed  them  great  latitude  in 
the  method  of  administering  it.  The  Jewish 
rulers  had  already  tried  and  passed  sentence 
on  Jesus  Christ,  and  they  came  to  Pilate  for 
the  endorsement  of  their  verdict  and  the 
necessary  permission  to  carry  out  the  death 
sentence.  If  they  had  not  evaded  his  first 
question  "What  accusation  bring  ye  against 
this  man  ? "  but  had  at  once  answered  that 
He  had  blasphemed  God  and  by  their  law 
He  ought  to  die,  probably  Pilate  seeing  that 
it  was  purely  a  question  of  Jewish  religion 
would  have  said,  "  Take  ye  Him  and  stone 
Him."  But  His  accusers  first  evaded  giving 
an  answer,  and  then  refused  a  direct  reply, 
which  determined  the  Procurator  to  look  into 
the  matter  for  himself.     Here,  evidently,  was 


128  THE   TRIAL   AND   CONDEMNATION         [Lect. 

a  case  in  which  a  man's  life  hung  in  the 
balance,  it  was  patent  that  for  envy  His 
fellow-countrymen  had  delivered  Him  and 
Pilate  chose  to  exercise  the  conqueror's  right 
of  recognitio. 

There  were  certain  important  formalities 
required  in  a  Roman  trial  which  were  faith- 
fully carried  out  by  Pilate.     He  demanded — 

a.  The  public  Accusatio. 

"  What  accusation  bring  ye  against 
this  man  ? " 

b.  He  addressed    to   the  prisoner  the 

Interrogatio. 
"  Art  thou  then  a  King  ?  " 
"  Art  thou  the  King  of  the  Jews  ?  " 

c.  The   Excusatio   on  the  part  of  the 

Prisoner  was  allowed. 
"  My  kingdom  is  not  of  this  kosjnos" 
"  Now   is   my   kingdom    not    from 
'  hence." 

d.  The  just   verdict  —  Absolvo  —  was 

three  times  repeated, 

"  I  find  no  crime  at  all  in  Him." 

The  Procurator  was  in  all  these  respects 
a  strictly  correct  judge.  He  failed  because, 
after   having   examined   the    Prisoner,    con- 


II.]  Pilate's  failure  129 

sidered  the  evidence  and  pronounced  Him 
innocent,  he  had  not  the  courage  to  abide 
by  his  dehberate  verdict,  but  yielding  to 
the  pressure  of  an  angry  crowd  suggested 
first  a  compromise  and  then,  in  spite  of  his 
knowledge  and  against  his  better  judgment, 
condemned  an  innocent  man  to  death. 
Pilate  had  plenary  power  to  deal  with  what 
would  appear  to  him  to  be  a  case  of  Jewish 
religious  enthusiasm  in  such  a  manner  as 
seemed  to  be  fitting  with  its  requirements, 
without  being  tied  down  to  the  strict  formali- 
ties of  a  Roman  law  court,  and  no  injustice 
can  be  alleged  nor  fault  found  with  the 
method  pursued  as  far  as  the  pronouncement 
of  the  verdict. 

The  TVz^/was  at  that  point  actually  com- 
pleted, and  all  that  followed  was  but  a  series 
of  vacillations,  compromises,  and  evasions 
made  in  order  to  avoid  carrying  the  just 
verdict  into  effect.  Overwhelmed  by  the 
blind  passion  of  the  multitude  Pilate  without 
rescinding  his  verdict  of  Not  Guilty  con- 
sented to  the  death  sentence. 

No  verdict  of  Guilty  or  Condemno  was 
ever  passed  upon  Our  Lord  by  the  Roman 
Procurator;  His  own  national  tribunal  alone 

R 


130        THE    TRIAL    AND    CONDEMNATION   [Lbct.  II. 

judged  Him  to  be  "worthy  of  death." 
Pilate  first  acquitted  Him,  and  afterwards 
weakly  yielded  to  the  clamour  of  the  Jews. 

It  may  have  been  that  he  was  utterly  un- 
strung by  such  an  exhibition  of  insensate 
fury  and  unable  to  pronounce  another  verdict. 
Possibly  even  he  would  not  compromise  him- 
self by  an  unjust  condemnation,  after  pro- 
nouncing a  just  acquittal ;  or  it  may  be  that 
in  this  feeble  -  minded  judge  there  was  a 
faint  sense  of  justice,  and  perchance  a  spark 
of  conscience,  which  prevented  him  from 
deliberately  giving  a  judgment  which  he 
knew  to  be  absolutely  false. 


LECTURE    III 

THE    CRUCIFIXION     AND     THE    SITE     OF     THE 
HOLY    SEPULCHRE 

Christus,  Tiberio  imperitante,  per  procuratorem 
Pontium   Pilatum   supplicio  affectus  est. 

The  chief  priests  and  scribes  with  the 
multitude  having  gained  their  end  —  the 
condemnation  of  Jesus  Christ  to  a  Roman 
death  —  now  probably  withdrew  from  the 
balustrade  of  the  Praetorium,  leaving  the 
Prisoner  to  the  tender  mercies  of  the  Roman 
soldiery  who  forthwith  led  Him  back  from 
the  open  court  into  the  Palace  Hall,  where, 
calling  together  the  whole  band  {a-Tretpa) 
they  proceeded  to  torment  their  victim  while 
the  cross  was  being  prepared. 

St  Matthew^  says  the  soldiers  arrayed 
Him  in  a  scarlet  robe.  St  Mark  and  St 
John  call  it  purple  ;  ^  probably  it  was  the 
chlamys  which  was  the  distinctive  mark  of 
a  Roman  soldier,  and  was  of  the  colour 
called  by  Pliny  coccinea.  Then  plaiting  a 
crown  of  thorns  {k^axavQiav)  they  mockingly 

^  xxvii.  27.  *  Mark  xv.  16  ;  John  xix.  2. 


132  THE  CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

saluted  Him  as  King  of  the  Jews.  Con- 
jecture has  been  rife  as  to  what  plant  was 
taken  to  make  the  crown.  It  is  impossible 
to  say  for  certain.  The  jzmcus  marimis, 
the  zizyphus  spina  Christi,  the  calycoto^ne 
villosa  known  in  modern  Arabic  as  the 
kundaul,  and  the  rhamnus  punctata  have 
all  been  suggested  with  more  or  less  plausi- 
bility, and  either  of  them  might  well  have 
been  used.  Perhaps  of  these  four  the  last 
mentioned  was  the  most  likely. 

St  Luke  is  silent  as  to  what  took  place 
between  the  passing  of  the  sentence  and 
the  procession  to  Golgotha.  St  John^  gives 
the  same  events  as  St  Mark,  but  makes 
them  take  place  earlier  in  the  morning  and 
Pilate  to  be  cognisant  of  them,  leaving  us 
at  first  sight  with  the  impression  that  there 
were  two  similar,  yet  distinct,  episodes. 
This  is  most  improbable.  It  is  far  more 
likely  that. St  Matthew  and  St  Mark  writing 
so  much  nearer  the  time  should  give  the 
correct  sequence,  and  that  the  writer  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel  who  put  together  his  recollec- 
tions of  Our  Lord  at  a  much  later  period 
may,  while  clearly  remembering  the  facts, 
have  inverted  the  sequence. 

1  John  xix.  2-4. 


III.]  THE   PROCESSION   TO   GOLGOTHA  I33 

It  cannot  have  been  long  after  the  offer- 
ing of  the  morning  sacrifice  when  the  pro- 
cession started  from  the  Praetorium,^  followed 
at  a  distance  by  a  "great  multitude  of 
the  people,  and  women  who  bewailed  and 
lamented  Him "  with  those  shrill,  weird 
sounds  that  from  time  immemorial  have 
been  practised  by  the  Orientals  on  the 
occasion  of  a  death,  and  which  none  save 
themselves  seem  capable  of  emitting.  It 
may  be  also  that  some  of  the  women  who 
followed  their  revered  Master  poured  forth 
as  they  moved  along  an  extemporised  lament 
for  Him,  as  it  was  the  special  office  of 
Jewish  women  to  improvise  and  chant  the 
death  songs  for  all  save  kings  and  warriors. 
Had  it  not  been  for  this  exception  we  should 
never  have  had  that  exquisitely  pathetic 
lament  of  David  for  his  friend  Jonathan. 

According  to  the  Synoptists,  the  soldiers 
meeting  Simon  of  Kyrene  coming  into 
Jerusalem  from  the  country,  made  him  carry 
the  cross  after  Jesus.  St  John  does  not 
mention  Simon,  but  says  that  Christ  "went 
out  bearing  the   cross    for    Himself."     And 

^  Mark  xv.  25.  John  xix.  14  complicates  the  question  by 
stating  that  it  was  the  sixth  hour  when  Pilate  said  to  the 
Jews,  "  Behold  your  King  1 " 


134  THE   CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

here  I  want  to  call  your  attention  to  one  of 
those  misapprehensions  of  Scripture  which 
has  formed  a  favourite  subject  for  artists, 
and  a  popular  text  for  sermons,  and  which 
owes  its  existence  to  ignorance.  It  is 
currently  accepted  among  Christians  that 
in  "carrying  the  cross"  Our  Lord  carried 
the  whole  cross  and  sank  beneath  the 
burden,  and  that  Simon  was  impressed  in 
order  to  relieve  Him  from  its  weight.  This 
is  not  so,  as  the  entire  cross  was  not  carried 
by  the  prisoners  ;  they  only  carried  to  the 
place  of  execution  the  patibulum,  or  cross- 
bar, which  was  usually  made  of  some  thin 
wood.  The  heavy  upright  made  of  a  strong 
beam — or  even  tree  trunk — was  driven  into 
the  ground  beforehand.  At  the  same 
time  we  can  well  believe  that  the  long 
drawn  out  mental  agony  which  began  in 
Gethsemane,  when  further  combined  with 
the  fatigue  of  standing  bound  for  so  many 
hours,  and  then  increased  by  the  brutal 
flagellation,^   had  completely  exhausted  Our 

1  The  Roman  soldiers  stripped  the  prisoner,  tied  him  to 
a  post  in  a  stooping  position,  and  beat  him  with  a  scourge 
composed  of  leather  thongs  with  sharp  pieces  of  bone,  or 
bits  of  lead  knotted  into  the  ends.  Flagellation  usually 
preceded  crucifixion  among  the  Romans.  Horace  calls  it 
the  "horribile  flagellum." 


III.]  GOLGOTHA  135 

Lord's  physical  powers,  so  that  even  the  light 
weight  of  the  patibulum  might  have  been 
beyond  His  strength  to  carry.  But  to 
represent  Him  as  carrying  the  entire  cross 
is  a  historical  and  artistic  fiction. 


Golgotha. 

The  site  of  the  crucifixion  is  generally 
spoken  of  as  a  "  mount "  or  "  hill,"  for  which 
statement  there  is  not  the  slightest  scientific 
foundation.  Nowhere  in  the  Gospels — 
which  alone  furnish  contemporaneous  records 
— is  Golgotha  alluded  to  in  any  way  that 
could  possibly  give  rise  to  the  idea  that  it 
was  on  raised  ground.  Early  Christian  art 
and  not  topography  is  probably  responsible 
for  the  original  presentment  of  an  elevated 
spot,  and  the  mosaic  in  the  Basilica  of 
St  Pudenziana  in  Rome,  which  probably 
dates  from  about  the  fourth  century,  is  one 
of  the  first  representations  of  the  cross 
being  erected  upon  a  little  rounded  knoll 
or  hillock.  From  that  time  onwards  artists 
have  invariably  depicted  the  crucifixion  as 
taking  place  upon  a  hill,  or  at  any  rate  on 


136  THE   CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

elevated  ground,  probably  in  order  to  carry 
out  the  idea  that  it  could  be  seen  from  afar. 
There  is  no  mention  of  Golgotha  being 
raised  ground  until  the  fourth  century,  when 
it  is  spoken  of  as  a  monticulus,  or  little  hill, 
by  the  Bordeaux  Pilgrim.  The  expression 
does  not  occur  again  until  once  in  the  sixth 
century,^  after  which  we  do  not  come  across 
it  until  Bernard  the  Pilgrim  visited  Palestine 
in  the  ninth  century,  and  writes  of  having 
seen  Mons  Calvaricr.  From  that  date  the 
expression  is  frequently  used  by  writers 
belonofingf  to  the  Western  Church,  and  has 
survived  unto  this  day.  The  early  Greek 
writers,  with  the  exception  of  Gregory 
Nazianzen  and  Cyril  of  Jerusalem,  never 
allude  to  Golgotha  as  connected  with  a  hill 
or  height,  and  it  must  be  remembered  that 
both  these  authors  lived  after  the  official 
finding  of  the  Holy  Places  by  the  Emperor 
Constantine.  Unfortunately,  this  false  idea 
is  likely  to  be  current  even  amongst  the 
educated  classes  so  long  as  some  good  people 
will  continue  to  write,  and  other  good  people 
will  continue  to  teach  their  children  that 
"  there  is  a  green  hill  far  away,"  upon  which 
Our  Lord  was  crucified. 

'  In  The  Breviarns. 


III.]  THE   SITE   OF   GOLGOTHA  137 

This  assertion  is  a  fair  specimen  of  one 
of  those  many  cases  that  we  come  across 
both  in  history  and  science  where  a  supposi- 
tion stated  sufficiently  often  and  forcibly, 
becomes  in  time  an  established  fact. 

Golgotha  was  not  a  hill,  and  if  it  had 
been  it  would  not  have  been  green.  It  was 
far  more  likely  to  have  been  a  site  in  one 
of  the  ravines  or  deep  ditches  which  run 
from  north  to  south  of  the  city,  it  may  even 
be  it  was  a  ridge  in  the  Tyropsean  Valley 
itself;  and  though  most  writers  place  it  on 
the  north  side  of  the  city  there  is  no 
reason  why  it  should  not  have  been  on 
the  south  side.  Such  a  spot  would  have 
allowed  both  priests  and  people  to  watch  the 
crucifixion  without  being  near  enough  to  incur 
ceremonial  defilement.  Josephof  Arimathaea's 
garden,  in  which  was  his  newly  excavated  tomb, 
lay  close  to  the  spot  selected  by  the  soldiers  ; 
and  like  all  Jewish  graves  it  would  be  rock- 
hewn  in  the  face  of  one  of  the  limestone 
terraces,  on  which  the  garden  was  formed. 

The  Gospels  give  us  no  definite  land- 
marks as  to  the  exact  site  of  Golgotha, 
and  it  is  easier  to  say  where  it  could  not 
have  been  than  where  it  actually  was.  We 
know   that   it    was    outside    the  second  wall 


138  THE   CRUCIFIXION  [LeCT. 

of  the  city,  that  it  was  near  a  main  road, 
and  yet  "  nigh  to  the  city,"  and  probably 
for  the  sake  of  pubHcity  was  close  to  the 
gateway.  It  must  have  been  an  open  space 
for  people  to  have  been  able  to  behold 
"from  afar  off,"  and  it  was  adjoining  a 
garden  in  which  was  a  new  tomb.  We 
know  that  the  lie  of  the  ground  was  such 
that  the  Jews  could  revile  Him  saying — 
not  calling  out,  or  shoziting :  "  Thou  that 
destroyest  the  Temple  and  buildest  it  in 
three  days  save  Thyself,"  etc.,  and  that  the 
road-farers  could  rail  on  Him  ;  that  it  was 
in  such  a  position  that  the  women  and  the 
disciple  whom  He  loved  could  stand  near 
the  cross  without  becoming  polluted,  and 
that  even  in  His  death  agony  His  words 
were  audible  to  them.  It  must  have  been 
immediately  outside  one  of  the  city  gates — 
possibly  on  the  north  side — which  could  be 
easily  rea'ched  from  the  Prsetorium,  whether 
that  building  at  the  moment  was  the  Palace 
of  Herod,  or  the  disused  palace  of  the 
Hasmonsean  princes  (see  p.    108). 

One  thing  would  be  quite  certain,  and 
that  is  that  the  soldiers  after  the  angry 
scenes  of  the  morning  would,  for  fear  of 
an     outbreak    of    popular    fury,     put     the 


III.]  ORIGIN   OF   NAME — GOLGOTHA  139 

Prisoner  to  death  as  near  at  hand  and  as 
quietly  as  they  possibly  could.  Pilate  also 
would  wish  to  avoid  a  disturbance  among 
the  Jews  with  Herod  In  Jerusalem  ready 
to  report  him  to  Tiberius  should  a  breach 
of  the  peace  occur ;  and  the  Jews  with  the 
Passover  drawing  nigh  must  have  been 
anxious  to  procure  the  execution  of  the 
sentence  as  speedily  as  possible,  for  they 
well  knew  that  many  long  hours  must 
elapse  before  death  would  release  their 
Victim,  and  enable  them  to  bury  His  body 
before  nightfall.  Instead,  therefore,  of 
looking  for  an  impossible  "green  hill" 
outside  Jerusalem  upon  which  to  locate  the 
crucifixion,  we  are  more  likely  to  be  nearer 
to  the  true  site  on  the  floor  of  a  rock- 
terrace  formlnor  the  side  of  a  ravine  close 
against  one  of  the  city  gates  In  the  second 
wall.  From  both  wall  and  gateway  the 
priests  and  people  could  easily  look  down 
upon  the  scene  and  deride  the  Prisoner 
without  being  defiled. 

a.  The  centurion  and  soldiers  led  Jesus 

away  to  "a  place  called  Golgotha, 

that  is  to  say  the  place  of  a  skull."  ^ 

^  Matt.  xxvi.  2)^. 


140  THE   CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

b.  "  The  place  Golgotha,  which  is  being 

interpreted  the  place  of  a  skull."  ^ 

c.  "The     place     which    is     called    the 

Skull."  2 

d.  "The   place    called   the   place   of  a 

skull  which  is  called  in  the  Hebrew 
Golgotha."^ 

The  name  in  Hebrew  is  Gulgoleth,  in 
Aramaic — the  current  language  in  Palestine 
at  that  day  —  GMlgiilta,  the  Greek  trans- 
lation of  which  is  Y^pavlov,  and  the  Vulgate 
Calvaria.  In  plain  English  it  was  the 
Skull  Place. 

Of  the  history  of  this  curious  place-name 
we  have  neither  authentic  nor  contemporary 
records,  and  the  early  Christian  writers  who 
have  written  much  and  speculated  more  upon 
the  subject  have,  in  assigning  reasons  for 
this  name  but  given  play  to  their  lively 
imaginations  mixed  up  with  old  traditions. 
Except  in  the  Gospels,  Golgotha  is  not 
mentioned  by  any  Christian  writer  until  the 
time  of  Origen  (a.d.  185-253)  who  visited 
Palestine  in  the  early  years  of  the  third 
century.  There  are  no  purely  Christian 
traditions  concerning  the  name  prior  to  the 

'  Mark  xv.  22.  '^  Luke  xxiii.  33.  '  John  xix.  17. 


HI.]  FANCIFUL   THEORIES  141 

fourth  century,  and  then  wc  have  only  the 
very  fantastic  account  given  by  Eusebius 
of  the  official  finding  of  the  site,  by  order 
of  the   Emperor  Constantine. 

That  Golgotha  received  its  name  because 
the  skulls  of  criminals,  who  had  suffered 
ca[jital  punishment  by  decapitation,  were 
allowed  to  lie  about  there  unburied,  is  a 
theory  that  is  not  worth  the  paper  and 
ink  with  which  it  has  been  written.  Any 
one  possessing  the  slightest  acquaintance 
with  either  Jewish  punishments  or  customs 
knows  that  such  a  thing  would  have  been 
impossible. 

That    the    skull  -  like    appearance   of  the 
ground     originated    the     name    is     another 
much    loved    and    equally    fanciful    theory, 
which   owes   its  existence   to   fourth-century 
writers  —  mostly    Latin,    and    therefore    for 
the  most  part  unacquainted  with  Jerusalem. 
Evidently  it  must  have  become  fashionable 
for     Epiphanius,     a     Hebrew,     combats     it, 
declaring     it     to     be     untrue.     "  There     is 
nothing  to  be  seen  in  the  place  resembling 
this  name  (skull),  for  it  is  not  situated  upon 
a   height   that    it  should  be   called   a    skull, 
answering  to  the  place  of  the  head  in  the 
human  body,  neither  has  it  the  shape  of  a 


142  THE   CRUCIFIXION  [LecT. 

lofty  watch  tower,  for  it  does  not  even 
rise  above  the  places  round  about  it. 
Indeed,  over  against  it  stands  the  Mount 
of  Olives.  .  .  .  Lastly,  even  that  hill  which 
once  stood  on  Mount  Sion,  but  at  the 
present  day  has  been  cut  down,  was  higher 
than  Golgotha."^  We  are  more  likely  to  get 
nearer  to  the  real  origin  of  the  name  by 
enquiring  of  the  old  Jewish  writers  than  of 
the  Christian  fathers,  though  it  is  doubtful 
if  they  can  do  more  than  give  local 
legends  as  handed  down  to  them  from  time 
immemorial. 

There  is  a  very  ancient  Hebrew  tradition, 
which  states  that  when  Adam  was  banished 
with  Eve  from  the  Garden  of  Eden,  he 
went  and  dwelt  in  the  land  of  Judaea,  and 
that  death  overtook  him  in  the  Mount  of 
Jebus — where  he  was  buried.  Now,  when 
Noah  was  warned  of  God  to  prepare  the 
ark  and  enter  into  it,  he  dug  up  the  bones 
of  Adam  and  took  them  with  him  for 
safe-keeping.  After  the  subsidence  of  the 
waters,  and  before  Noah  and  his  sons 
parted  each  to  go  his  own  way  and  re- 
people  the  earth,  the  Patriarch  divided  the 
bones    among    Shem,     Ham,    and    Japhet. 

^  Adversus  Hcereses^  lib.  1.,  tome  iii.,  xlvi.  5. 


III.]  HEBREW   TRADITION  I43 

To  the  former  he  gave  the  skull,  allotting 
Judaea  to  him  at  the  same  time.  When, 
therefore,  Shem  arrived  in  his  own  country 
he  reburied  the  skull  at  Jehus,  which  after- 
wards became  Jerusalem — the  Sacred  City.^ 

Another  ancient  legend  is,  that  when 
Adam  lay  dying  he  called  together  his  son 
Seth  and  his  immediate  male  descendants 
to  the  fourth  generation,  and  bade  them 
embalm  his  body  and  lay  it  in  the  cave  El- 
Kanuz,  further  requiring  of  them  that 
whichever  of  them  should  be  alive  when 
they  next  migrated  was  to  take  his  body 
and  re-bury  it  in  the  centre  of  the  earth 
"from  whence  shall  come  my  salvation,  and 
the  salvation  of  all  my  children,"  Noah 
took  the  body  into  the  ark,  and  when 
dying  bade  Shem  and  Melchisedec  the  son 
of  Peleg,  take  the  body  secretly  and  go  forth 
with  it,  "until  the  angel  of  the  Lord  shall 
show  you  the  place  of  burial,  and  ye  shall 
know  that  this  spot  is  the  middle  of  the 
earth."  Which  thing  happened  on  Mount 
Moriah. 

This  tradition  that  Golgotha  the  Skull 
Place,  was  the  grave  of  Adam's  skull  was 
well    known    to    the    early    Greek    Fathers. 

^  Moses  Bar  Cepha,  De  Paradiso,  i.,  cap.  14. 


144  "^"^    CRUCIFIXION  [Lbct. 

Origen — a  Hebrew  scholar — knew  it,  so  also 
did  Athanasius,  Epiphanius,  Chrysostom, 
and  other  fourth  and  fifth  century  writers  ; 
though  it  is  noticeable  that  both  Eusebius 
and  Cyril  of  Jerusalem  do  not  mention  it, 
but  their  position  with  regard  to  Constantine 
would  perhaps  prevent  that.  Only  a  few 
of  the  Latin  writers  seem  to  have  taken 
it  into  account  ;  Augustine  in  the  Sermones 
Supposititii,  Sermo,  vi.,  alludes  to  the  "ancient 
tradition  that  the  first  man  Adam  was  buried 
on  the  very  spot  where  the  cross  was  set  up, 
and  the  place  was  therefore  called  Calvary." 
Jerome  knew  of  the  Hebrew  tradition,  but 
scorned  it,  proposing  an  interpretation  of  his 
own  which  is  wholly  untenable.^  In  the  sixth 
and  subsequent  centuries  it  was  evidently 
a  current  tradition  that  Adam  was  buried 
in  Jerusalem,  and  that  on  the  site  of  his 
grave  Jesus  Christ  was  crucified,  thereby 
bringing  salvation  to  Adam's  descendants, 
and  thus  fulfilling  his  prophecy.  So  widely 
was  this  legend  known  that  it  found  its  way 
into  the  Abyssinian  Church  and  appeared 
in  the  Ethiopic  "  Book  of  Adam." 

The  probability  is,  therefore,  that  Golgotha 
received  its  name  from  being  the  traditional 

^  Migne,  Pat.  Lat.  xxv.,  col.  209. 


in.]  THE    ROUTE    TO    GOLGOTHA  145 

burial-place  of  Adam's  skull.  That  it  was 
a  well-known  place  is  evident,  as  neither  of 
the  Evangelists — not  even  St  John  who  is 
so  exact  in  his  explanations — thought  it 
necessary  to  mention  its  locality.  Adam 
legends  seem  to  have  found  favour  with 
early  ecclesiastical  writers,  and  there  are, 
I  believe,  four  separate  works  upon  the 
traditional  history  of  our  first  ancestor, 
besides  a  "  Book  of  Adam,"  referred  to 
in  the  Talmud.  With  the  exception  of  this 
last  they  are  post  Christian  in  date,  but 
based  on  Jewish  tradition. 

Speculation  has  been  busy  throughout  the 
ages  as  to  the  route  taken  from  the 
Praetorium  to  Golgotha,  and  a  vast  amount 
of  ingenuity  based  mostly  upon  ignorance 
of  the  topography  of  Jerusalem  has  been 
wasted  in  describing  minutely  the  Via 
Dolorosa.  It  is  only  necessary  to  say  that 
the  present  so-called  Via  Dolorosa,  upon 
which  so  much  sentimentality  has  been 
poured  out,  cannot  possibly  have  been  the 
street  in  Jerusalem  along  which  Our  Lord 
passed.  I  am  well  aware  that  an  old  tradi- 
tion represents  Him  as  having  been  marched 
through  the  main  thoroughfares  of  the  Holy 
City,    so   that    the    crowds    assembling   for 

T 


146  THE    CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

the  Passover  might  see  and  take  warn- 
ing by  His  fate.  It  is  also  true  that  the 
Romans  considered  it  to  be  part  of  the 
death  punishment  to  escort  a  criminal 
through  the  chief  streets  in  order  that  he 
might  feel  his  disgrace  more  acutely ;  but 
Christ  was  not  a  Roman,  nor  had  He  been 
found  guilty  of  any  crime  by  the  Procurator 
— who  was  merely  sacrificing  Him  to  please 
the  people — nor  was  He  being  put  to  death 
on  Roman  territory.  When  Pilate  delivered 
Christ  to  be  crucified  he  had  finished  with 
Him,  and  it  was  the  executioners  and  not  the 
governor  who  chose  the  site  and  the  route. 

Seeing  the  ferment  and  uproar  that  the 
trial  of  the  Prisoner  had  caused,  and  the 
fury  with  which  His  death  sentence  was 
forced  from  the  Roman  governor  by  His 
own  countrymen,  and  knowing  also  that 
Jerusalem  was  crowded  for  the  Feast,  it  was 
only  likely  that  the  centurion  would  select 
the  nearest  available  spot  outside  the  city 
wall  for  the  site  of  the  execution,  and  get 
it  over  as  quickly  as  possible.  We  do  not 
know  for  certain  which  palace  served  that 
morning  as  the  Roman  judgment-hall,  but 
of  this  we  may  be  quite  sure  that  the 
centurion  removed  Our  Lord  by  the  nearest 


Ill]  HOUR    OF    THE    CRUCIFIXION  147 

and  least  frequented  route  in  order  to  prevent 
either  a  riot  or  a  rescue  ;  and  "  modern  tradi- 
tion is  clearly  at  fault  in  identifying  the  first 
part  of  the  Via  Dolorosa  with  a  street  that 
lies  above  the  ditch,  which  at  the  time  of 
the  crucifixion,  must  have  protected  the 
Antonia  and  the  second  wall "  ( Wilson). 


The  Crucifixion. 

At  Golgotha,  the  Skull  Place,  they  crucified 
Him,  having  spared  Him  the  worst  indignity 
inflicted  upon  a  condemned  criminal,  that  of 
stripping  Him  of  His  clothes  before  leaving 
the  place  of  detention.  The  clothing  and 
in  fact  anything  of  which  the  Prisoner  could 
be  despoiled,  were  the  perquisites  of  the 
executioners,  for  which  there  is  a  distinct 
provision  made  in  Roman  law,^  so  that  there 
was  nothing  unusual,  nor  was  there  any 
especial  insult  intended  when  the  four 
soldiers  parted  His   garments  among  them. 

The  Synoptists  are  not  agreed  as  to  the 
hour  at  which  the  crucifixion  took  place, 
St  Matthew  does  not  mention  it,  but  states 

^  De  bonis  damnatorum^  xlvii.  20. 


148  THE    CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

that  there  was  darkness  over  all  the  land  from 
the  sixth  to  the  ninth  hour,  and  that  at  the 
ninth  Jesus  yielded  up  His  spirit.^  St  Mark 
says  that  it  was  the  third  hour  when  they 
crucified  Him,  and  that  darkness  prevailed 
from  the  sixth  to  the  ninth  hour  when 
**  He  gave  up  the  ghost."  ^  St  Luke  like 
St  Matthew  gives  various  details  as  to  what 
took  place  after  the  crucifixion,  and  before 
the  darkness  settled  down  upon  Jerusalem 
at  the  sixth  hour,  but  agrees  with  the 
Synoptists  that  it  was  at  the  ninth  hour 
when  Our  Lord  cried  with  a  strong  voice 
and  gave  up  His  spirit.^  St  John  does  not 
mention  either  the  time  of  the  crucifixion  or 
the  hour  of  death,  nor  does  he  allude  to  the 
darkness  that  enveloped  the  land/ 

Seeing  that  St  Matthew  and  St  Luke  both 
mention  such  facts  as  the  setting  up  of  the 
titulus,  the  division  of  the  garments,  the 
reproaches  of  the  robbers,  and  the  derision  of 
the  passers-by,  scribes  and  elders  as  all  taking 
place  after  the  actual  crucifixion  and  before 
the  sixth  hour,  probably  the  earlier  time — 

^  Matt,  xxvii.  45,  46,  50.  "^  Mark  xv.  25,  33. 

*  Luke  xxiii.  46. 

*  But  he  does  state  that  at  the  sixth  hour  on  the  day 
of  preparation  Pilate  said  to  the  multitude  "  Behold  your 
King!"  which  adds  yet  another  difificulty.    John  xix,  14. 


III.]  ORIGIN    OF    CRUCIFIXION  I49 

the  third  hour  given  by  St  Mark — is  the 
correct.  Crucifixion  was  such  a  lingering 
death  that  three  hours,  medically  speaking, 
would  have  hardly  sufficed  for  the  Victim's 
release.  It  was  not  an  uncommon  thing 
for  a  prisoner  to  hang  on  the  cross  for  three 
or  even  four  days,  dying  in  the  end  from 
exhaustion,  starvation,  and  exposure  to  the 
elements.  Cases  have  even  been  recorded 
of  a  criminal  being  taken  down  as  dead, 
and  reviving.  Had  Christ  been  a  Roman 
subject,  burial  would  have  been  denied  Him, 
as  the  body  would  have  been  left  on  the 
cross  until  the  birds  and  beasts  had  devoured 
the  flesh,  and  the  action  of  sun  and  rain  had 
caused  the  skeleton  to  fall  to  pieces. 

Most  people  base  their  ideas  of  the 
crucifixion  upon  mediaeval  art,  and  the  mass 
of  devotional  literature  which  has  been 
published  upon  the  subject ;  these  if  tested 
by  medical  and  historical  evidence  will  be 
found  in  many  points  to  be  inaccurate  or 
only  applicable  to  the  aggravated  punish- 
ment inflicted  at  a  subsequent  period.  I 
have  not  the  slightest  desire  to  minimise 
the  physical  sufferings  of  Jesus  Christ,  and 
I  desire  to  speak  with  all  reverence  of  the 


150  THE    CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

events  of  that  day,  but  we  have  slipped  into 
a  conventional  way  of  accepting  statements, 
and  it  will  be  well  to  look  at  the  actual  facts 
rather  than  at  the  emotional  and  artistic 
presentments  of  Christ's  death.  The  mental 
and  spiritual  agony  of  the  God-Man  was 
beyond  human  power  to  understand  or  to 
measure,  so  intense  that  compared  with  it 
His  physical  sufferings  were  probably  as 
nought ;  but  the  contemplation  of  exaggerated 
bodily  suffering  can  only  produce  a  morbid 
psychic  condition,  instead  of  carrying  us  up 
on  to  the  higher  plane  involved  in  the 
endeavour  to  realise  the  insuperably  greater 
agony  of  a  perfectly  pure  spirit. 

Let  us  look  at  the  history  of  this  punish- 
ment of  crucifixion  up  to  the  time  of  the 
siege  of  Jerusalem.  There  is  no  need  to 
ofo  into  the  added  suffering  of  it  under  Titus 
and  the  later  emperors.  Jesus  Christ  was 
not  crucifi'ed  under  Varus  or  Diocletian,  but 
in  the  days  of  Tiberius  and  by  the  method 
in  use  in  his  reign. 

The  very  word  in  itself  is,  on  the  surface, 
misleading,  because  in  Roman  law  every 
man  condemned  to  death  was  called 
cruciarius,  and  whether  he  was  merely 
hanged  on  an  arbor  infelixy  or  by  whatever 


in.]  DERIVATION   OF   WORD  151 

form  of  capital  punishment  he  was  executed, 
that  death  was  called  the  "cross" — crux} 

We  must  go  back  to  the  very  beginning 
of  history  for  the  origin  of  the  punishment. 
The  Greek  word  gives  it  best  (jravpo^,  a 
great  stake,  which  in  Latin  becomes  pahis, 
from  which  we  derive  our  words  pale, 
paling,  palisade,  and  impale.  To  impale 
was  to  suspend  the  corpse  of  a  victim  to 
an  upright  stake  or  beam,  or  to  drive  a 
stake  through  it.  This  punishment  came 
from  the  East.  It  was  common  in  Chaldaea 
and  Persia,  and  was  not  unknown  in  Egypt. 
It  was  practised  by  the  Philistines,  the 
Numidians,  and  the  Phoenicians,  and  from 
these  latter  found  its  way  into  Greece,  where 
it  was  at  first  used  as  a  posthumous  form 
of  disgrace.  I  believe  that  Alexander  the 
Great  was  the  first  to  bind  —  not  nail  —  a 
living  man  to  the  stake. 

Crucifixion  was  in  fact  the  outcome  or 
evolution  of  impaling.  There  are  ancient 
Babylonian  bas-reliefs  representing  the  king 
and  queen  feasting  in  a  beautiful  garden 
surrounded  by  their  courtiers  and  favourites. 
In  the  trees  above  them  are  suspended  the 

^  Cicero,  Pro  Rabirio,  3,  4 ;  Plautus,  Aulularia,  3,  5,  46  ; 
Apuleius,  Met.  10 — Terence,  Eunuchus^  2,  3,  91. 


152  THE    CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

heads  of  their  enemies,  whose  bodies  were 
either  staked  or  hung  up  in  a  public  place 
as  a  warning  to  the  passers-by.  In  Egypt 
may  be  seen  at  Edfou  and  other  temples 
representations  of  prisoners,  with  their  hands 
and  feet  tied  behind  their  backs,  bound  to  a 
great  stake  driven  into  the  ground  ;  and  the 
episode  of  the  baker  in  the  history  of  Joseph 
is  familiar  to  all.  He  was  to  be  beheaded  and 
his  body  afterwards  impaled.^  The  suspen- 
sion and  exposure  of  a  dead  body  either  from 
a  tree  or  a  stake  was  by  no  means  unknown 
among  the  Jews ;  in  fact  Deuteronomy 
xxi.  2  2  expressly  provides  for  this  form  of 
punishment,  and  St  Paul  directly  applies  it 
to  Our  Lord's  crucifixion.^ 

When  "  Israel  abode  in  Shittim,"  and 
bowed  themselves  down  before  the  Baal  of 
Peor,  Moses  was  commanded  to  take  the 
chiefs  of  the  people  and  "hang  them  up 
before  the  sun,"  i.e.^  in  broad  daylight,  that 
all  might  see  and  fear,  and  he  bade  the 
judges  saying,  "  Slay  ye  every  one  his  man."^ 
Probably,  as  in  Exodus  xxxii.  27,  they  were 
first  put  to  the  sword  and  then  impaled. 

The  people  of  Ai,  in  the  days  of  Joshua, 
were  put  to  the  sword,  and  the  corpse  of 
^  Gen.  xl.  19.  "  Gal.  iii.  i^.  ^  Numbers  xxv. 


III.]  JEWISH    FORM    OF    PUNISHMENT  153 

their  king  hanged  on  a  tree  until  the  sunset, 
when  Joshua  took  it  down,  cast  it  just  out- 
side the  gate  of  the  city — the  most  public 
place — and  raised  a  cairn  over  it.^  There  is 
even  a  better  example  still  in  2  Samuel  xxi. 
When  famine  had  ravaged  the  land  of 
Canaan  for  three  years,  David  sought  the 
Lord;  "And  the  Lord  said,  It  is  for  Saul 
and  for  his  bloody  house,  because  he  put  to 
death  the  Gibeonites."  So  David  sent  for 
the  Gibeonites  and  enquired  of  them  what 
atonement  he  could  make  for  the  dead  king's 
act,  and  they  replied  that  neither  silver  nor 
gold  could  wipe  out  the  deed,  and  requested 
that  seven  of  Saul's  sons  should  be  handed 
over  to  them  that,  "they  might  hang  them 
up  unto  the  Lord."  So  they  were  put  to 
death  in  the  beginning  of  the  barley  harvest, 
and  their  bodies  "  hanged  before  the  Lord  "  ; 
and  Rizpah,  the  mother  of  two  of  the  dead 
men,  stationed  herself  below  the  stakes  until 
the  autumn  rains  came,  in  order  to  prevent 
the  birds  of  the  air  and  the  beasts  of  the 
field  from  touching  them.  As  a  reward  for 
this  devout  attention  David  took  the  bones 
and  had  them  buried. 

The   fate   that  befell  Saul  and  Jonathan 

^  Joshua  viii. 

U 


154  THE    CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

his  son,  at  the  hands  of  the  Philistines,  was 
the  same,  their  bodies  were  hung  up  in  the 
street  or  broad  place  of  Beth  Shan. 

7'he  Greeks  appear  to  have  borrowed  the 
idea  of  exposing  the  dead  body  of  a  criminal 
upon  a  stake  or  gibbet  from  the  Phoenicians, 
and  to  have,  afterwards,  added  suffering  to 
ignominy  by  first  binding  the  prisoner  alive 
to  the  tree  or  stake.  Alexander  the  Great 
is  said  by  Josephus  to  have  thus  crucified 
two  thousand  conquered  Syrians — but  the 
numbers  are  doubtless  exaogrerated.  From 
Greece  this  form  of  death  passed  to  Rome, 
where  it  was  developed  from  the  suspension 
of  a  criminal  upon  an  ai^bor  infelix,  i.e.,  a 
tree  which  neither  grows  from  seed  nor  bears 
fruit  ^ — to  the  binding  of  him  alive,  to  an 
upright  stake  with  a  transverse  beam  along 
which  were  stretched  the  arms — a  cross  in 
fact. 

At  first'  the  Romans  made  but  sparing 
use  of  this  form  of  crucifixion  as  a  death 
punishment ;  citizens  were  exempt  from  it, 
and  it  was  reserved  for  slaves,  highway- 
men, those  condemned  for  treason,  and  for 
criminals  of  the  lowest  and  most  violent 
type.       It    was    looked    upon    with    intense 

^  Pliny,  Hist.  Nat.,  lib.  xxvi. 


III.]  ROMAN     USE    OF    CRUCIFIXION  155 

horror,  and  Cicero  in  his  celebrated  letter 
to  Verres  speaks  of  it  as  crudelissvnum 
teterrimumque.  Not  only  was  there  great 
ignominy  mfamia  connected  with  this  form 
of  execution,  but  the  sufferings  of  the  victim 
were  so  protracted  —  sufferings  which  he 
must  endure  to  the  bitter  end  as  conscious- 
ness was  generally  retained  until  the  moment 
of  death.  For  three,  and  even  four  days 
prisoners  have  been  known  to  hang  bound 
to  the  cross,  exposed  to  the  heat  by  day 
and  the  cold  by  night,  jeered  at  and  tor- 
mented by  every  passer  -  by,  until  finally 
they  died  from  exhaustion  and  exposure  to 
the  elements. 

Under  the  emperors  crucifixion  was 
placed  on  the  list  of  the  death  penalties,^ 
and  then  citizens  were  not  exempted  from 
it,  though  in  order  to  mitigate  the  ignominy 
in  their  case,  it  was  sometimes  carried  out 
privately  in  the  prison  itself,  instead  of  in 
some  public  place.  The  victim  was  accursed, 
and  the  infamia  was  so  great  that  it  was 
considered  an  outrage  on  the  privileges  of 
a  Civis  Romanus.  When  Verres  crucified 
some  Roman  citizens  in  Sicily  it  aroused 
a  perfect    storm    of  fury,    and    called    forth 

*  "  Summa  supplicia  sunt  Crux,  Crematio,  DecoUatio." 


156  THE    CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

from  Cicero  the  following  strong  protest : 
"  Facimus  est  vinciri  civem  Romanem  ; 
scelus  verberari ;  prope  parricidum  necari ; 
quid  dicam  in  crucem  tolli  ?  Verbo  satis 
digno  tarn  nefaria  res  appellari  nullo  modo 
potest." 

In  the  time  of  Jesus  Christ  crucifixion 
was  of  rare  occurrence  in  Palestine,  and  was 
practically  unknown  as  a  punishment  for  the 
Jews,  who  were  allowed  to  be  put  to  death 
by  their  own  methods  of  execution.  After 
the  siege  of  Jerusalem,  and  during  the 
succeeding  years  of  revolt,  the  Romans 
became  so  exasperated  with  the  Jews  that 
they  treated  them  with  great  harshness,  and 
frequently  crucified  them  ;  though  the  state- 
ments of  Josephus,  our  chief  authority  in  this 
matter,  must  be  received  with  caution.  It 
is  not  an  unlikely  supposition  that  Jesus 
Christ  was  one  of  the  first — if  not  the  very 
first  —  Jew  to  suffer  this  dreaded  death 
penalty.  After  the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  and 
under  the  later  emperors,  crucifixion  as  a 
form  of  capital  punishment  was  only  too 
frequently  resorted  to,  and  often  took  place 
under  circumstances  of  great  cruelty.  Thus 
when  Tertullian,  Justin,  Plautus,  and  others 
describe  some  of  the  horrors  of  crucifixion, 


III.l  FORMS    OF    THE    CROSS  1 57 

and  apply  them  to  Christ,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  they  are  writing  of  the  aggravated 
form  of  it  that  obtained  in  their  day,  and  not 
of  the  method  in  use  when  Christ  was  put  to 
death. 

Three  forms  of  cross  were  used  by  the 
Romans  : 

a.  The  simplex — a  long  beam  or  stake 

to  which  the  victim  was  firmly 
bound,  his  arms  being  fastened 
above  his  head. 

b.  The  immissa  or  capitata — the  Latin 

cross  with  the  transverse  or  pati- 
buluni  fastened  at  right  angles 
about  three-fourths  of  the  way  up 
the  (TTavpo?.  This  is  the  form 
which  popular  art  has  chosen  for 
Our  Lord's  cross,  though  we  have 
not  the  very  slightest  clue  as  to 
which  kind  the  soldiers  used.  Re- 
membering how  sparsely  wooded 
Jerusalem  and  its  environs  are,  it 
was  not  unlikely  to  have  been 
the  simplex  as  three  crosses  were 
required. 

c.  The   summissa   or    commissa,    or    as 

it    is    sometimes    called    the    Tau 


158  THE    CRUCIFIXION  [Lbct. 

cross,  in  which  the  patibulum  was 
morticed  into  the  point  of  the 
upright  beam. 
d.  The  decussata — better  known  as  St 
Andrew's  Cross,  in  which  the  up- 
right and  ihe. patibulum  were  merely 
grooved  into  or  nailed  to  each  other 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  form  two 
acute  angles. 

The  a-ravpo?  ov  Stake  was  generally  made 
from  oak,  or  from  some  strong  tough  wood 
which  was  driven  down  firmly  into  the 
ground,  where  it  remained  for  future  use.  It 
was  usually  from  y^  to  9  feet  high,  and  the 
victim  was  so  placed  as  to  have  his  head 
and  shoulders  above  the  crowd.  In  the  days 
of  Galba  the  a-ravpo?  was  sometimes  made 
much  higher  in  order  to  add  to  the  degrada- 
tion of  the  victim,  and  in  one  case  mentioned 
by  Suetonius  it  was  whitened  so  as  to  attract 
more  attention.  For  the  patibulum  or  cross 
bar  some  common  kind  of  wood  usually 
sufficed ;  it  was  formed  either  from  two 
parallel  laths  set  a  few  inches  apart  and 
closed  at  the  ends,  through  which  the 
prisoner's  head  was  sometimes  passed,  or 
less  frequently  of  a  simple  board.     This  was 


III.]  ROMAN    METHOD    OF    CRUCIFIXION        1 59 

carried  by  the  condemned  man  himself  to 
the  place  of  execution.  In  some  cases  a 
block  or  saddle  was  fixed  to  the  crray/ooV, 
called  the  cornus  or  sedilis  excessus  which, 
while  relieving  the  great  strain  on  the  heart 
and  internal  organs,  prolonged  the  suffering. 
The  feet  were  placed  side  by  side  and  bound 
to  the  upright.  The  block  or  wedge  seen 
beneath  them  in  pictorial  and  plastic  repre- 
sentations of  the  crucifixion  exists  in  artistic 
imagination,  and  not  in  history. 

Mediaeval  and  modern  art  and  the  ecclesi- 
astics of  the  Western  Church  insist  upon  the 
nailing  of  Our  Lord's  hands  and  feet  to  the 
cross.     The  four  Gospels  give  no  clue  as  to 
the  form  of  the   cross  nor   the   method   of 
execution.     Tiberius  was  the  first  to  invent 
the  barbarous  plan  of  nailing  the  hands,  as 
he  maintained  that  death   by  being  merely 
bound  to  the  cross  was  no  punishment,  but 
simply  an   escape  from    it.     The   lowest  of 
Roman    criminals   condemned    for    violence 
and  murder  were  thus  executed.     It  is  more 
than  doubtful  whether  as  early  as  a.d.   29 
or  33  this  aggravated  form  of  crucifixion  had 
passed  into  the  provinces,  and  very  unlikely 
that  it  would  have  been  inflicted  upon  a  Jew 
who  was  condemned  to  death — not  for  any 


l6o  THE    CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

crime  of  violence  or  treason  against  Imperial 
Caesar,  but  merely  because  the  Procurator 
wished  to  please  the  Jewish  mob.  If  any 
of  the  victims  were  nailed,  it  was  more  likely 
to  have  been  the  Roman  malefactors  (Xijarral) 
than  Jesus. 

The  Evangelists  give  very  little  help  in 
the  matter. 

The  only  direct  allusion  to  this  subject 
is  not  given  by  the  Synoptists.  It  is  the 
incident  of  Thomas  recorded  in  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  wherein  that  disciple  declines  to 
believe  in  the  risen  Christ,  unless  he  sees 
for  himself  the  marks  of  the  nails  in  the 
hands  and  the  spear  in  the  side.  There  is 
no  mention  of  the  feet  you  will  notice. 

St  Luke  records  the  sudden  appear- 
ance of  the  risen  Christ  in  the  midst  of 
His  eleven  disciples,  who  were  frightened, 
supposing  that  they  beheld  a  phantom,  and 
to  reassure  them  He  bade  them  see  and 
feel  His  hands  and  feet — not  as  many  suppose 
for  His  identification  by  the  nail  marks — but 
that  they  might  realise  that  He  was  an 
actual  living  being,  for  "a  spirit  hath  not 
flesh  and  bones  as  ye  see  Me  having. "^ 
**  He  shewed  them  His  hands  and  His  feet," 

^  Luke  xxiv.  39. 


III.]  CRUELTY   OF   TIBERIUS  l6l 

is  not  to  be  found  in  many  of  the  older 
manuscripts  of  this  Gospel. 

It  is,  of  course,  within  the  region  of  possi- 
bility that  Our  Lord's  hands  were  nailed 
besides  being  bound  to  the  cross,  but  the 
silence  of  the  four  Gospels  upon  the  subject, 
and  with  only  this  one  late  allusion  to  it, 
and  that  made  by  a  writer  who  had  survived 
the  horrors  of  both  Jewish  and  Christian  per- 
secutions and  so  may  well  have  had  the 
aggravated  form  of  crucifixion  in  his  mind, 
leaves  it  an  open  question.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  the  feet  were  not  nailed.  It  is, 
I  believe,  an  impossibility — even  if  a  nail 
large  enough  could  on  the  spur  of  the  moment 
have  been  forged — to  drive  one  through  both 
feet  at  once  as  depicted  in  crucifixes  and 
paintings  ;  and  it  is  almost  as  impossible  to 
nail  through  even  one  foot,  partly  on  account 
of  its  position  against  the  a-ravpo?,  and  partly 
on  account  of  the  hardness  of  the  bones  in 
the  arch  of  the  foot  and  the  heel.  It  would 
certainly  be  absolutely  impossible  to  nail  the 
feet  to  the  a-ravpog  without  the  block  of  wood 
seen  in  so  many  pictures,  which  block  does 
not  appear  in  contemporary  history  or 
classic  literature. 

Although  Tiberius  invented    the   horrible 

X 


l6a  THE   CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

cruelty  of  nailing  the  hands  to  the  cross- 
bar, the  victim  was  bound  to  it  first.  It 
would  be  impossible  to  fasten  a  man — with 
only  a  nail  passed  through  the  palm  of  each 
hand — to  a  cross  beam,  without  disastrous 
results  ensuing.  The  weight  of  the  body 
in  such  a  position  would  fall  forward,  and 
would  soon  tear  through  the  metatarsal  tissue 
of  the  hands.  The  aggravated  cruelty  lay  not 
only  in  the  greatly  increased  suffering,  but 
also  in  the  fact  that  so  little  blood  was  lost  that 
the  Victim's  death  was  in  no  way  hastened. 

Realistic  but  thoroughly  inaccurate  de- 
scriptions in  some  of  the  hymns  and 
devotional  books  of  the  Western  Church, 
speak  of  the  blood  that  poured  or  fell 
from  Our  Lord's  wounds ;  but  in  reality, 
in  nailing  through  the  hands  only  a  very 
few  drops  of  blood  would  exude,  and 
these  so  slowly  that  they  would  coagulate 
at  once  in  the  open  air.  In  the  same  way 
writers  have  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  spear  that  pierced  the  Victim's  side 
pierced  also  the  heart.  We  have  absolutely 
no  foundation  for  such  a  statement.  The 
only  Gospel  that  mentions  this  episode  ^ 
gives  no  details,  and  the  fact  that  blood  and 

^  St  John  xix.  34. 


III.]  THE   TWENTY-SECOND    PSALM  163 

serum  issued  from  the  incision  is  no  proof  that 
they  came  from  the  heart ;  they  may  equally 
well  have  come  from  the  pleura  surrounding 
the  lung.  Many  of  the  old  masters  represent 
in  their  paintings  the  wound  as  on  the  right 
side. 

Doubtless  that  incorrect  and  unfortunate 
translation  of  Psalm  xxii.  i6,  "They  pierced 
My  hands  and  My  feet,"  which  has  been 
twisted  round  to  have  a  Messianic  mean- 
ing, is  responsible  for  the  preconceived 
idea  common  to  most  people  that  Our 
Lord's  hands  and  feet  were  nailed. 

The  Masoretic  or  pointed  text  reads 
kadri  "like  a  lion,"  which  is  worse  than 
no  help  at  all,  as  it  does  not  make  sense. 
Duhm  and  many  other  Hebrew  scholars 
would  read  here  kadri2  instead  —  a  verb 
which  is  derived  from  the  root  Mr,  mean- 
ing in  its  first  idea  to  be  round  \  therefore 
handcuffs  or  cords  or  anything  which  binds 
or  goes  rotmd  the  feet  and  hands  would  be 
in  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the  word. 
Many  ancient  versions  give  "they  bound" 
instead  of  "they  pierced."  "They  fettered 
My  hands  and  My  feet"  will  probably  be 
a  rendering  that  will  meet  with  the  require- 
ments of  the  original.     The   same   idea    is 


164  THE   CRUCIFIXION  [Lkct. 

to  be  found  in  Zechariah  xii.  10.  h  was 
an  allusion  to  ihc  oKl  punishment  before 
described,  the  hani^ino-  up  o\'  the  victim 
with  his  hands  above  his  head. 

The  lews  oi'  that  period  knew  nothino-  of 
the  "hanoinL;'  up"  or  erucitixion  with  nails  of 
a  living-  man.  Jeremiah  speaks  of  "  binding 
up  "  as  the  fate  of  princes  after  the  downfall 
of  Jerusalem.^  Darius  the  Mede,  proclaimed 
that  if  an\'  man  should  alter  the  decree 
made  by  Cyrus  in  favour  of  the  jews  that 
a  beam  should  be  pulled  out  frgm  his 
house,  and  "  let  him  be  lifted  up  (or  hung  up) 
and  fastened  thereon."  Gregory  Nazianzen 
writing  in  the  fourth  century,  uses  the 
technical  expression,  "and  when  they  had 
hung  up  the   Lord,"  etc."'' 

The  reading  "they  bound"  of  some  ancient 
versions  confirms  this  meaning  which  Jerome 
translates  by  viuxcrunt. 

"  Probably  fixcrunt  would  never  have 
been  used  but  for  the  idea  that  Our  Lord's 
sufferings  were  foretold  here  in  detail.  It 
was  believed  that  His  hands  were  pierced: 
therefore,  it  was  argued  His  feet  were 
also.       But    there    is    no   authority   for   this 

'  Lamentations  v.  12. 

*  Christus  Pafitns,  I.  657  et  seqq. 


in.]  INCORRECT    PRESENTMENTS  165 

latter  belief  in  the  New  Testament,  and 
apart  from  this  verse  nowhere  else  either. 

To  re^^ard  God  as  planning  the  details 
of  the  Passion  of  His  Son  centuries  before- 
hand, and  inspiring  men  to  write  them  down, 
is  to  take  a  low  and  unworthy  view  of  His 
action.  It  introduces  also  a  psychological 
miracle  which  is  unthinkable."^ 

Early  Christian  art  in  mosaic  and  fresco 
was  far  more  reverend  and  reserved  in  the 
presentment  of  Our  Lord's  crucifixion  than 
were  media:val  painters,  and  are  modern 
religious  writers.  At  first  the  old  artists 
used  only  signs  or  symbols  to  represent  it, 
sometimes  only  the  Greek  letter  T ;  as  years 
went  on  you  will  find  a  simple  cross  depicted, 
then  later  the  sacrificial  lamb  placed  in  front 
of  or  near  to  a  plain  Latin  cross,  until  after 
many  developments  a  realistic  age  portrayed 
the  Saviour  clothed  in  the  long  robe  or 
co/odmm,  which  was  gradually  shortened  to 
the  loin  cloth  or  perizona.  Since  then 
art  encouraged  by  the  Western  Church 
has  degraded  itself  by  spending  its  genius 
of  conception  and  craftsmanship  upon  the 
terrible  and  ultra  realistic  presentments  of 
the     crucifixion,     which    even     were     they 

'  W.  F.  Cobb,  The  Book  of  Psalms^  pp.  62,  64. 


l66  THE   CRUCIFIXION  [Lect 

accurate  in  detail  are  horrible  to  look  upon, 
and  should  be  discouraged  as  tending  towards 
morbid  sentimentality.  We  ought  to  be  as 
historical  and  sober  in  our  religious  beliefs 
as  we  try  to  be  in  our  scientific  and 
intellectual  ones.  We  cannot  be  worse 
Christians  for  striving  after  this,  and  we 
might  be  better. 

St  Matthew  says  that  when  they  came  to 
Golgotha  "they  gave  Him  wine  to  drink 
mingled  with  gall";  St  Mark  calls  it  "wine 
mingled  with  myrrh."  St  Luke  and  St 
John  make  no  allusion  to  it.  It  is  more 
than  probable  that  the  myrrh  of  St  Mark 
is  identical  with  the  gall  of  St  Matthew, 
for  the  Hebrew  root  for  both  words  is  the 
same,  and  means  "bitter."  Two  ancient 
physicians,  Galen  and  Dioscorides,  speak  of 
the  soothing  effects  of  frankincense  and 
myrrh,  both  of  which  are  bitter  to  the  taste. 
Some  writers  have  seen  in  that  verse,  "  Give 
strong  drink  to  him  that  is  ready  to  perish," 
when  taken  in  conjunction  with  the  words 
that  precede  it,^  an  indication  of  its  use 
among  the  Jews  as  an  anodyne  for  those 
condemned  to  capital  punishment,  and  there 

^  Prov.  xxxi.  6. 


Ill,  THE    TITULUS  167 

is   a   passage    in    the    Babylonian    Talmud 
which  lends  colour  to  this  view. 

In  the  days  when  crucifixion  was  less 
frequent  than  it  afterwards  became,  the 
Roman  soldiers  used  to  give  an  aromatic 
drink  to  their  victims  after  having  bound 
them  to  the  patibulum,  and  before  raising 
both  to  the  o-raypoV,  in  order  to  deaden  con- 
sciousness. It  is  to  this  that  the  Evangelists 
refer.  It  consisted  of  wine  mingled  with 
frankincense  to  which  was  sometimes  added 
the  lebkSnah,  called  by  the  Hebrews  Rosh, 
and  by  the  Arabs  Ras,  i.e.,  "the  head";  it 
was  also  known  as  the  "father  of  sleep," 
and  was  made  probably  from  the  papaver 
S07nniferum  or  opium  poppy,  which  has  an 
acrid  taste.  It  was  practically  a  temporary 
anaesthetic,  and  brought  a  blessed  dulness  of 
sensation,  if  not  absolute  unconsciousness, 
to  the  sufferer  in  the  first  awful  moments  of 
tension. 

This  drink  our  Lord  refused. 

The  soldiers  then  set  up  over  His  head  the 
"superscription"  or  "accusation"  dictated 
by  the  Roman  Procurator.  This  is  known 
technically  as  the  titulus,  and  was  carried 
either  by  the  condemned  man  himself,  or 
was    borne    before    him    to    the    place    of 


l68  THE   CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

execution.  It  was  a  thin  board  or  slab  of 
wood  whitewashed  over  with  gypsum,  on 
which  was  inscribed  in  large  black  letters 
the  **  accusation,"  not  necessarily  the 
"crime,"  for  which  the  prisoner  was  to 
pay  the  death  penalty.  St  John  alone 
gives  the  correct  term  to  it.  The  four 
Evangelists  vary  as  to  its  exact  wording, 
no  two  formulae  being  exactly  similar 
though  the  basis  of  all  is  the  same — The 
King  of  the  Jews. 

His  own  people  had  brought  Him  to  the 
governor  to  decree  the  death  sentence 
because  by  their  law  He  ought  to  die  for 
making  Himself  the  Son  of  God,  a  point 
of  Jewish  ecclesiastical  law  which  to  Rome 
mattered  nothing. 

They  shifted  their  ground  when  pressed 
for  a  direct  accusation  of  definite  crime, 
and  tried  to  bring  in  treason  against 
Caesar. 

Pilate  condemned  Christ  without  retracting 
or  modifying  his  original  sentence — "  I  find 
no  crime  in  Him,"  and  therefore  as  he 
sentenced  the  Prisoner  to  be  crucified, 
though  it  was  merely  **  to  please  the 
people,"  he  naturally  had,  as  the  law 
required,  to  shew  cause  why  capital  punish- 


III.]  THE   ACCUSATION  169 

ment  was  inflicted.  He  therefore  recorded 
the  accusation  brought  against  the  Prisoner 
by  His  own  countrymen. 

The  carrying  of  the  titulus  was  to  impress 
upon  the  condemned  man  His  shame  and 
degradation,  hence  arose  the  saying  /Saa-Ta^eiv 
TOP  aravpov  avrov,  and  is  another  of  those 
many  misapplied  texts ;  for  the  taking  up 
the  cross  meant  —  not  the  carrying  of  a 
literal  cross,  but  the  public  shame  and 
exposure  to  insult,  which  resulted  from 
having  to  carry  the  titulus. 

The  Procurator  was  determined  that  no 
passer-by  on  that  day,  and  no  gazer  at  that 
sight,  should  fail  to  understand  why  that 
Prisoner  was  executed.  In  Hebrew  (probably 
Aramaic)  the  current  language  of  the  people, 
in  Greek  the  polite  language  which  at  that 
time  was  understood  by  every  educated 
man,  and  in  Latin  the  tongue  of  the 
conquering  and  executive  race  ran  the 
accusation  —  The  King  of  the  Jews. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  Roman  law  it 
was  absolutely  the  only  title  that  Pilate  could 
have  placed  above  the  Prisoner's  head,  and 
to  the  Jews  it  must  have  been  as  gall  and 
wormwood  ;  but  no  amount  of  entreaty  could 
produce  anything   from  the   governor,    but 

y 


170  THE   CRUCIFIXION  [Lect. 

the  unrelenting  reply,  "  What  I  have  written 
I  have  written." 

The  only  note  of  human  and  physical 
suffering  during  those  long  hours  comes  to 
us  through  the  Fourth  Gospel,  which  records 
that  just  before  the  end,  when  in  the  last 
stage  of  final  exhaustion  Christ  exclaimed, 
"  I  thirst,"  a  soldier  dipped  a  bunch  of 
hyssop — which  he  could  easily  pull  out  from 
the  wall  close  by — in  the  posca  or  thin,  sour 
wine  which  formed  part  of  the  daily  rations 
of  the  common  soldiers,  and  putting  it  on 
a  reed  raised  it  to  His  lips.  This  gave  the 
momentary  stimulus  which  enabled  Him  to 
cry  with  a  loud  voice,  T^TiKecTTai — "  It  is 
finished  " — the  effort  of  which  ruptured  the 
heart.  The  Jews  realising  that  the  day 
was  passing,  and  that  the  sunset  was  draw- 
ing nigh  which  brought  a  festival  Sabbath 
— upon  which  it  would  have  been  a  defile- 
ment of  their  land  to  have  victims  dying 
of  capital  punishment,  or  dead  bodies  hang- 
ing at  the  very  gates  of  the  Holy  City — 
besought  Pilate  that  their  legs  might  be 
broken.  This  was  nothing  unusual  if  there 
was  any  reason  for  hastening  death,  and 
was    done    with    a    heavy    wooden    mallet 


III.]  NO   SYMPATHY   FROM   THE   JEWS  171 

called  a  crurifragmm.  Christ  being  already- 
dead  to  all  appearances  *'  they  brake  not  His 
legs  "  ;  but  in  order  to  make  certain  that  it 
was  actual  and  not  apparent  death,  a 
soldier  ran  a  spear  into  His  side,  which 
proved  beyond  doubt  that  He  had  truly 
yielded  up  His  spirit.  This  episode  finds 
no  place  in  the  Gospels  of  the  Synoptists, 
and  it  is  curious  that  St  Luke,  who  always 
notices  and  records  the  physical  facts  con- 
nected with  Our  Lord's  life,  should  have 
omitted  this  one. 

The  Jews  had  now  to  all  appearances 
gained  their  desired  end,  and  had  stopped,  as 
they  thought,  the  Preacher  and  His  doctrines. 
While  accepting  the  consequences  of  His 
death  they  had  managed  to  throw  off  the 
responsibility  of  it  from  their  own  shoulders 
on  to  those  of  their  hated  conquerors,  by 
the  hands  of  whose  officers — at  their  own 
request  —  the  death  punishment  had  been 
carried  out.  They  had  shown  no  sympathy 
with  the  pure  life  and  high  ideals  of  the  Master 
during  His  ministry,  and  at  the  time  of  His 
trial  He  received  neither  mercy  nor  justice 
from  their  hands.  They  not  only  did  not 
manifest  the  slightest  touch  of  humanity  as 


172  THE   CRUCIFIXION  [Lkct. 

they  gathered  near  His  cross,  but  they 
derided  Him  in  His  death  agony.  And 
the  irony  of  it  was  that  throughout  the  long 
spun  -  out  hours  of  that  grim  tragedy  the 
only  mark  of  consideration  that  He  received 
was  not  from  one  of  His  own  chosen  band 
of  disciples,  nor  from  one  of  His  brethren, 
His  kinsfolk,  or  His  acquaintance.  It  was 
not  even  one  of  His  own  countrymen  but 
a  Roman  soldier  who,  in  the  moment  of 
supreme  agony,  offered  Him  the  soothing 
draught  of  the  "father  of  sleep,"  of  which, 
"when  He  had  tasted  thereof,  He  would 
not  drink." 


The  Tomb, 

"And  after  these  things  Joseph  of 
Arimathsea,  being  a  disciple,  but  secretly, 
for  fear  of  the  Jews,  asked  of  Pilate  that  he 
might  take  away  the  body  of  Jesus :  and 
Pilate  gave  him  leave."     John  xix.   38. 

"And  Joseph  took  the  body  and  wrapped 
it  in  a  clean  linen  cloth,  and  laid  it  in  his 
own  new  tomb,  which  he  had  hewn  out  of 
a  rock."     Matt,  xxvii.  59,  60. 


III.]  Joseph's  tomb  173 

No  minute  details  are  given  as  to  the 
exact  site  of  the  tomb  of  Christ.  The 
Synoptists  merely  say  that  it  was  rock- 
hewn  ;  St  John  alone  gives  any  clue  to  its 
situation — "  in  the  place  (not  on  which  it 
would  be  had  Golgotha  been  a  hill)  where 
He  was  crucified,  there  was  a  garden,  and 
in  the  garden  a  new  tomb."  There  the 
two  disciples,  who  had  not  dared  to  openly 
confess  their  belief  in  the  Preacher,  placed 
the  body  for — as  I  believe — temporary  burial 
only.^  The  Jews  thought  so  much  of 
interment  in  the  family  tomb  that  probably 
Joseph,  who  was  "of  the  house  and  lineage 
of  David,"  or  Zacharias  the  priest,  whose 
wife  Elizabeth  was  of  the  daughters  of 
Aaron  and  a  kinswoman  of  Mary,  would 
either  of  them  have  had  some  large  place 
of  "gathering  unto  the  fathers,"  where, 
after  the  Sabbath  was  past,  the  body  could 
be  finally  laid  to  rest  with  the  customary 
Jewish  ceremonial. 

Joseph's  tomb  was  probably  excavated  in 
the  face  of  the  limestone  rock,  which  arose 
in  abrupt  step-like  terraces  from  the  ravines. 
This  geological  formation  is  found  in  many 
parts  of  the    Holy   Land,   specially  in   and 

^  John  xix.  42  gives  ground  for  this  opinion. 


174  "^"^   HOLY   SEPULCHRE  [Lect. 

round  Jerusalem ;  and  in  the  scarp  forming 
the  back  of  these  terraces  are  to  be  seen  to 
this  day  tombs  of  post-exilic  period.  They 
consist  of  an  open  ante  -  chamber,  round 
which  runs  a  stone  mastabah  or  bench,  and 
an  inner  mortuary  chamber.  Probably  with 
the  need  for  haste  which  the  approach  of 
the  Sabbath  necessitated,  the  body  was  laid 
on  the  bench  in  the  ante-chamber.  Certainly 
this  would  be  the  case  were  Joseph's  tomb 
intended  to  be  only  a  temporary  resting- 
place.  The  fact  also  that  the  women  could 
see  the  body,  and  how  it  was  laid,  points 
to  its  being  placed  on  the  mastabah,  and 
not  put  away  in  the  loculus  or  kok  ;  the 
spices  would  also  be  for  temporary  burial 
only. 

Controversy  has  raged  fast  and  furious 
round  the  site  of  the  tomb,  and  the  question 
as  to  whether  the  present  Church  of  the 
Holy  Sepulchre  in  Jerusalem  does  or  does 
not  cover  it  has  been  fought  by  archaeologists 
and  ecclesiastics  with  much  energy  and  no 
little  bitterness.  Until  we  know  for  an 
absolute  certainty  the  trend  of  the  second 
wall  of  the  city  we  can  never  lay  down  the 
law  positively  upon  the  subject,  or  even 
suggest  a  definite  spot  whereon  may  have 


III.]  CHRISTIAN    MEETING-PLACES  1 75 

been   the   tomb    that    contained   for   a   few 
hours  the  body  of  the  dead  Christ. 

During  the  first  four  centuries  no  mention 
is  made  of  the  sacred  site.  Immediately 
after  the  Ascension  "those  that  beheved " 
sold  their  possessions  for  the  benefit  of 
the  needy,  and  had  all  things  in  common.^ 
Land  is  especially  mentioned  as  being  parted 
with  by  its  owners ;  it  is,  therefore,  more 
than  probable  that  Joseph  sold  his  garden, 
which  would  include  his  tomb.  And  this 
brings  us  face  to  face  with  the  question, 
which  is  an  important  one  to  consider  in 
connection  with  this  subject,  Was  it  likely 
that  any  veneration  was  paid  by  the  Apostles 
and  early  Christians  to  the  temporary  rest- 
ing-place of  their  Master's  body  ?  The  first 
Christians  were  essentially  Jews  in  their 
strict  observance  of  Mosaic  regulations  ;  and 
the  Temple,  and  not  the  tomb,  was,  until 
the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  their  meeting-place  for 
worship  and  instruction.  Any  reverence  of 
the  empty  grave  would  be  a  practical  nega- 
tion of  that  very  doctrine  of  the  Resurrection, 
of  which  the  Christ  was  the  exponent  and 

1  Acts  ii.  44,  45  ;  iv.  32,  34. 


176  THE   HOLY   SEPULCHRE  [Lbct. 

example,  and  to  which  they  were  to  be  the 
witnesses  to  all  the  world. 

The  cultus  of  the  tombs  of  relations  and 
friends,  which  has  become  so  popular  now- 
adays, is  but  a  relic  of  paganism  that  has 
survived  in  spite  of  Christianity,  and  is  only 
conceivable  when  graves  contain  all  that 
has  resisted  the  dissolution  of  the  bodies  of 
the  departed ;  but  for  Christians  to  make 
an  empty  tomb  an  object  of  veneration  is 
so  absolutely  wanting  in  logic  and  common- 
sense  that  it  is  inconceivable  that  the 
Apostles  and  their  converts  should  have 
wasted  their  time,  and  compromised  their 
faith  in  the  Resurrection  by  so  doing.  They 
were  too  full  of  a  burning  zeal  to  go  and 
proclaim  the  risen  Christ,  and  their  definite 
orders  were  to  disperse  after  the  descent  of 
the  Paraclete,  and  to  go  into  all  the  world 
making  c^isciples  and  baptizing  into  the 
Tri-une  Name.  So  persuaded  also  were 
they  that  their  Lord  would  return  visibly 
before  many  years  had  elapsed,  that  their 
one  desire  was  to  lose  no  time  in  carrying 
the  Gospel  of  the  Kingdom  north  and 
south,  east  and  west,  entreating  all  men  to 
accept  it. 


III.]  UNIMPORTANCE   OF  THE   TOMB  1 77 

We  hear  no  word  from  them,  nor  sugges- 
tion even,  that  their  converts  should  pray 
or  meditate  at  the  tomb  —  nay,  rather, 
practical  missionary  activity  in  spreading 
the  new  faith  was  the  distinguishing  mark 
of  those  early  proselytes.  Christ's  visible 
departure,  which  was  accompanied  by  the 
promise  of  His  invisible  presence  among 
them  unto  the  end  of  the  ages,  had  filled 
the  Apostles  with  joy,  "  and  they  were  con- 
tinually in  the  Temple  praising  and  blessing 
God,"  not  praying  beside  or  contemplating 
an  empty  grave. 

Their  whole  attitude  was  so  completely 
that  of  men  who  lived  with  present  realities, 
who  implicitly  believed  in  a  living  and  ever 
present  Master,  and  fully  expected  His 
speedy  appearance.  To  them  the  temporary 
tomb  must  have  been  nothing,  the  risen, 
returning  Christ  everything,  and  this  belief 
which  was  the  driving  -  wheel  of  their 
missionary  zeal,  coupled  with  their  banish- 
ment from  Jerusalem  and  the  complete 
destruction  of  their  city,  would  effectually 
prevent  any  cultus  of  the  tomb,  and  there- 
fore even  the  knowledge  of  its  site  from 
being  preserved. 

To  the  first  Jewish  Christians  the  Temple 

z 


178  THE    HOLY    SEPULCHRE  [Lect. 

with  its  worship  and  the  Mosaic  observances 
and  ceremonial  were  religious  essentials,  as 
the  early  chapters  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles 
shew.  To  the  Gentile  Christians  who  had 
never  known  or  seen  the  Lord,  the  venera- 
tion of  His  empty  tomb  would  be  a  contradic- 
tion of  the  definite  teachino-  of  their  own 
special  apostle — St  Paul — whose  whole  force 
was  expended  in  endeavouring  to  raise  the 
thoughts  and  ideas  of  his  converts  to  a  plane 
above  "the  earth — earthy" — to  the  worship 
of  a  risen,  ascended,  and  yet,  spiritually,  ever 
present  Christ,  rather  than  persuading  them 
into  the  mere  intellectual  belief  in  a  physical, 
earthly,  and  historic  Jesus.-^ 

The  flight  of  the  Christian  community  to 
Pella  in  a.d.  67  or  68  would  further  lessen 
any  tendency  —  had  one  arisen  —  to  make 
the  tomb  an  object  of  veneration,  while  the 
siege  and  capture  of  Jerusalem  and  its  total 
destruction  by  Titus  followed  by  its  occupa- 
tion by  the  Legion  Fretensis  and  their 
barracks  would  certainly  alter  the  ground, 
and  sweep  away  many  Jewish  landmarks 
and  sites.  It  is  computed  that  the  Tenth 
Legion  with  the  auxiliaries  quartered  in  and 
round  Jerusalem  cannot  have  numbered  less 

^  Harnack,  History  0/ Dogma,  pp.  82  et  seqq. 


III.]  RETURN    OF   THE   CHRISTIANS  I79 

than  seven  thousand  men,  while  the  civil 
population  has  been  estimated  at  three 
thousand.  Notwithstanding  that  Vespasian 
considered  "the  province  of  Judsea"  as  the 
private  possession  of  the  Emperors,  to  whose 
privy  purse  the  revenues  belonged,  the 
Holy  City  lay  desolate  and  in  ruined  heaps, 
overgrown  with  weeds  and  merely  a  Roman 
camp  until  a.d.  136.  Hadrian  then — "after 
passing  the  plough  over  the  ground  of  the 
capital  "  ^  rebuilt  it,  but  not  the  Temple.  To 
the  new  city  he  gave  "his  own  name  and 
the  use  of  the  imperial  title,  for,  as  he  was 
named  ^lius  Hadrianus  he  named  the  city 
^lia." 

It  is  most  unlikely  that  during  all  those 
troublous  years  a  continuous  tradition  of  the 
tomb  would  have  been  kept  up.  We  do  not 
know  when  the  Christians  returned  from 
Pella — in  fact  we  have  only  the  authority 
of  one  author,  Epiphanius,  for  asserting  that 
they  did  so.  By  the  Romans  they  were 
at  first  regarded  as  a  Jewish  sect,  and  no 
distinction  was  drawn  by  the  governors 
between  Jews  and  Christians.  It  was  not 
until  the  revolt  under  Bar  Cocheba  in  a.d. 
132,   who  claimed  to  be  the  Messiah,  that 

1  Jerusalem  Talmud,  Taanith^  iv. 


l80  THE    HOLY    SEPULCHRE  [Lect. 

there  was  a  definite  and  final  rupture  between 
the  Jew  and  the  Christian  ;  then,  each  went 
his  own  widely  divergent  way  for  ever,  upon 
acknowledgfed  and  distinct  religious  lines. 

Where  Jehovah's  house  had  once  stood 
arose  a  temple  to  Jupiter  Capitolinus,  and 
Jerusalem  with  its  seven  districts,  from  which 
every  Jew  was  rigidly  excluded,  became  a 
Roman  military  colony.  Christians  were 
then  allowed  to  come  and  reside  outside 
the  walls  of  JEVisl  proper,  but  by  this  time 
knowledge  of  the  site  of  the  tomb  must 
have  become  hazy  and  traditional,  even 
if  the  first  Christians  had  kept  it  in  re- 
membrance. 

Neither  Golgotha  nor  the  Holy  Sepulchre 
is  mentioned  by  any  of  the  early  pilgrims 
to  Jerusalem,  which  looks  as  if  their  sites 
did  not  possess  a  special  attraction  for 
the  devout.  Eusebius  in  his  Ecclesiastical 
History  does  not  mention  them,  and  in  the 
Demonstratio  Evangelica  he  speaks  of  the 
Mount  of  Olives  and  not  the  sepulchre  as 
being  the  place  where  "the  Christians  flock 
together  to  hear  the  story  of  Jerusalem," 
and  to  worship;  for  there  on  the  top  "Our 
Lord   and    Saviour   who    was    Himself    the 


III.]  constantine's  command  i8i 

Word — communicated  the  mysteries  of  the 
Christian  covenant,  and  from  thence  He 
ascended  into    heaven." 

If  the  Christians  had  set  any  religious 
value  upon  the  ground  of  Golgotha  and  the 
sepulchre,  we  may  be  perfectly  certain  that 
they  would  have  found  some  means  to 
preserve  among  themselves  the  knowledge 
of  those  sites,  even  if  the  latter  had  been 
sold,  and  mention  would  surely  have  been 
made  of  them  by  early  pilgrims. 

As  it  is  we  have  to  wait  until  the  fourth 
century  before  any  desire  is  manifested  to 
reverence  them,  and  then  it  is  admitted  by 
Eusebius  that  they  were  lost.  Moreover 
the  desire  to  bring  them  to  light  did  not 
come  spontaneously,  either  from  the  little 
Christian  community  settled  outside  ^^lia 
or  from  the  devotion  of  pilgrims  who  had 
travelled  to  Jerusalem,  but  merely  by  the 
fiat  of  Imperial   Rome. 

History  is  silent  as  to  the  real  motive 
which  induced  Constantine  to  write  to 
Bishop  Macarius  of  ^lia,  and  desire  him 
to  find  the  true  cross  and  the  holy  places  ; 
though  Eusebius  puts  it  down  to  "  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  Saviour."  One  thing  is  quite 
certain,  and  that    is    there    is    not   a   single 


1 82  THE   HOLY   SEPULCHRE  [Lect. 

testimony  to  the  finding  of  them  given  by 
an  eye  -  witness  ;  every  statement  made  is 
based  either  upon  Divine  inspiration  or  hear- 
say, and  the  accounts  given  of  their  dis- 
covery are  so  mixed  up  with  the  marvellous 
— not  to  say  miraculous  —  as  to  discount 
credibility. 

In  the  year  a.d.  312,  Constantine  the 
Emperor  of  Rome,  after  having  murdered 
his  wife  Fausta  in  her  bath  and  poisoned  his 
son  Crispus,  became  a  convert  to  Christianity. 
It  may  have  been  to  show  his  zeal  for  the 
new  faith,  or  perhaps  as  an  act  of  atone- 
ment for  the  murder  of  his  relatives,  that 
he  commanded  "a  house  of  prayer  to  be 
erected  to  God  at  Jerusalem  near  the  place 
called  the  Skull."  In  order  the  better  to 
accomplish  this,  Helena  his  mother,  "  being 
divinely  directed  by  dreams "  set  forth  to 
find  the  sepulchre  of  Christ,  "and  after 
much  difficulty  by  God's  help  recovered  it,"^ 

Alexander  Monachus  says  that  Constantine 
"sent  his  mother  a  woman  in  all  respects 
most  worthy  of  praise,  with  letters  and  a 
great  sum  of  money,  to  Macarius,  Bishop 
of  i^lia  in  order  that  they  might  together 
^  Sozomen,  Hist,  Eccles.^  vol.  ii. 


III.]    MIRACULOUS   FINDING   OF   THE   CROSS        183 

search  for  the  Holy  Cross  and  adorn  the 
holy  places  with  buildings."  These  sites 
were  unknown,  and  the  Bishop  of  ^lia 
was  commanded  by  Constantine  to  "use 
all  diligence  in  searching  for  the  life-giving- 
Cross,  the  Lord's  sepulchre,  and  all  the 
holy  places."  Was  it  likely  that  when 
Imperial  Caesar  commanded  that  certain 
unknown  sites  should  be  laid  bare,  and 
sent  his  mother  with  a  large  sum  of  money 
for  that  purpose,  that  they  would  remain 
"  lost  "  for  long  ?  The  story  of  the  discovery 
both  of  the  cross  and  the  sites  may  be  read 
at  length  in  the  Theophania  of  Eusebius, 
of  which  the  original  Greek  text  is  lost  and 
only  the  Syriac  copy  is  in  existence,  also  in 
his  Life  of  Constantine,  a  most  exaggerated 
panegyric  of  the  erst- while  murderer.  Sozo- 
men,  Socrates,  Theodoret,  Sulpicius  Severus, 
and  Rufinus  in  their  Ecclesiastical  Histories, 
and  also  Alexander  Monachus  in  his  De 
Inventione  sanctoe  Crucis  relate  the  mira- 
culous finding  of  the  sacred  relics.  How- 
ever, their  writings  are  not  contemporaneous 
with  the  event,  and  their  statements  are  so 
mixed  up  with  the  legendary  and  incredible 
that  from  a  historical  standpoint  they  are  not 
of  great  value.    Even  those  of  Eusebius  were 


184  THE    HOLY   SEPULCHRE  [LscT, 

not  penned  until  Constantine  had  officially- 
announced  his  "marvellous  discovery,"  and 
their  authority  was  only  such  information 
as  Constantine,  Helena,  and  Macarius  chose 
to  give.  The  Bishop  of  ^lia  to  whom 
"  the  place  was  miraculously  revealed,"  and 
who  was  present  at  the  finding  of  the  so- 
called  "true  cross,"  and  who  must  have 
seen  the  miracle  of  the  healinof  of  a  noble 
lady  by  touching  its  wood  (Theodoret),  and 
the  raising  of  a  dead  body  by  being  placed 
in  contact  with  it  (S.  Severus),  discreetly 
never  records  his  experiences  (see  p.  187). 

Eusebius,  who  lived  nearest  to  the  time 
of  Constantine,  says  that  ungodly  men — or 
rather  the  whole  race  of  demons  by  their 
means — and  "impious  persons"  determined 
to  hide  the  sacred  cave  by  bringing  earth 
from  the  outside  and  covering  it  up,  that 
their  machinations  continued  for  a  long 
time,  and  that  "  none  of  the  governors, 
praetors,  or  emperors  was  found  capable  of 
abolishing  these  daring  impieties,  save  only 
that  one  (Constantine)  who  is  dear  to  God." 
The  hidden  cave  "was  covered  with  a 
dreadful  thing,  a  veritable  sepulchre  of  souls, 
a  building  to  the  impure  demon  Aphrodite, 
to  whom  an  image  was  set  up."     One  asks 


III.]  JEWS   FORBIDDEN    IN   JERUSALEM  185 

the  question :  Upon  whose  authority  does 
Eusebius  make  this  statement  ?  If  such  a 
dehberate  desecration  had  taken  place  it 
would  never  have  been  allowed  to  pass 
unnoticed  by  previous  Christian  writers, 
and  yet  not  one  has  alluded  to  either 
Golgotha  or  the  tomb,  let  alone  their 
desecration. 

Again,  who  were  these  "  impious  persons  " 
who  at  some  unspecified  date  had  of  set 
purpose  desecrated  the  sacred  spot  ?  They 
cannot  have  been  the  Roman  governors  of 
^lia  nor  either  of  the  emperors,  for  no 
writer — and  certainly  not  one  engaged  in 
praising  the  reigning  Caesar — would  have 
dared  to  make  such  a  statement.  It  would 
have  savoured  too  much  of  crimen  Icbscb 
rnajestatis  with  its  consequent  death  penalty. 
Nor  was  it  likely  to  have  been  the  Jews, 
as  after  the  defeat  of  Bar  Cocheba  Jerusalem 
was  ploughed  up  and  the  ruins  of  the  Temple 
finally  destroyed.^  They  were  then  informed 
that  if  they  so  much  as  came  to  the  city, 
much  more  if  they  entered  it,  they  should 
be  starved  to  death  ;  and  when  in  the  reiofn 
of  Constantine  they  were  once  more  allowed 
to    return,    they    would    not    have    erected 

^  Maimonides,  Bib,  Rabbinica^  iii.  67. 

2   A 


1 86  THE   HOLY   SEPULCHRE  [Lect. 

a  temple  in  honour  of  a  deity  of  their 
conquerors.  Knowing  how  irresistible  and 
relentless  was  the  hand  of  Rome,  it  seems 
impossible  to  believe  that  "  neither  governors, 
praetors,  nor  emperors "  could  abolish  these 
"impieties"  did  they  wish  to  do  so.  We 
never  hear  of  the  subject  until  Constantine 
with  his  materialistic  Roman  intellect  wished 
to  establish  first  a  cultus  of  the  cross,  and 
then  of  the  sacred  sites. 

Several  pilgrimages  to  Jerusalem  are 
recorded  as  having  been  made  before 
Constantine's  reign  by  Christians  of  the 
Eastern  Church.  Melito  of  Sardis  visited 
it  in  the  end  of  the  second  century, 
Alexander  of  Cappadocia  afterwards  Bishop 
of  Jerusalem,  and  Firmilian  in  the  third,  and 
many  others  are  mentioned  in  the  fourth  ; 
but  they  went  "to  see  where  the  Gospel 
history  was  acted  out,"  "in  consequence  of 
a  vow,"  "for  the  sake  of  information,"  "to 
investigate  the  footsteps  of  Jesus,"  and 
"to  worship  on  the  Mount  of  Olives." 
Evidently  Golgotha  and  the  tomb  had  no 
attraction  for  them. 

The  required  sites  having  been  miracu- 
lously pointed  out  to  the  Bishop  of  yElia, 
and  the  layers  of  earth  removed,  "  contrary 


III.]  HELENA   AND   THE   TRUE   CROSS  187 

to  all  expectation  the  venerable  monument 
of  our  Saviour's  resurrection  became  visible." 
The  miraculous  indication  of  a  rock-tomb 
— and  rock-tombs  are  common  enough  in 
Jerusalem  —  will  hardly  be  deemed  by 
archaeologists  sufficient  proof  that  this 
particular  grave  selected  by  Macarius,  and 
over  which  Constantine  built  the  famous 
basilica,  was  in  fact  the  Holy  Sepulchre. 
We  are  told  that  in  this  same  place  Helena 
discovered  three  crosses  and  the  tablet  of 
Pilate,^  and  she  being  distressed,  and  fear- 
ing that  through  ignorance  she  might 
venerate  one  of  the  robbers'  crosses  instead 
of  the  Saviour's,  confided  her  difficulty  to 
Macarius,  who  to  relieve  her  sought  a  sign 
from  heaven,  and  shortly  obtained  it.  There 
was  a  lady  of  rank  living  in  Jerusalem  at 
the  time,  who  was  ill  with  an  incurable 
disease,  so  the  Bishop  and  the  Emperor's 
mother  proceeded  to  her  bed  -  side  and 
applied  pieces  of  each  cross  to  her  body. 
When  the  wood  of  the  Saviour's  cross 
touched  her  she  forthwith  arose  healed.^ 
Sulpicius  Severus  gives  another  version 
equally   incredible.     When    Helena   was    in 

^  Socrates,  Hist.  Eccles..,  i.  17. 
^  Sozomen,  Hist.  Eccles..^  ii.  i. 


l88  THE   HOLY   SEPULCHRE  [LecT. 

her  worst  difficulty,  "just  as  if  by  the 
appointment  of  God,"  the  funeral  of  a  dead 
man  was  being  conducted  with  the  usual 
ceremonies ;  all  rushing  up  took  the  body 
from  the  bier.  It  was  applied  in  vain  to 
the  first  two  crosses,  but  when  it  touched 
that  of  Christ,  wonderful  to  tell,  while  all 
stood  trembling,  the  dead  body  was  shaken 
off  and  stood  up  in  the  midst  of  those 
looking  at  it.  The  true  cross  was  thus 
identified  and  consecrated  with  all  ceremony.-' 
Unfortunately  neither  of  these  stories 
carries  with  it  either  probability,  or  even 
possibility.  However,  Helena  and  Macarius 
were  quite  satisfied  as  to  the  genuineness  of 
this  "venerable  and  hallowed  monument  of 
Our  Saviour's  Resurrection,"  as  well  as  of 
the  "venerable  wood  of  Our  Lord's  Cross," 
for  Constantine  wrote  to  the  Bishop  and 
ordered  "that  a  house  of  prayer  should  be 
erected  round  the  cave  of  salvation,  on  a 
scale  of  rich  and  imperial  costliness."  This 
looks  as  if  the  Emperor's  original  intention 
had  been  to  include  the  whole  ground  of 
Golgotha  and  the  tomb  within  one  magni- 
ficent basilica,  which  plan  was  evidently 
abandoned,  as  two  churches  arose,  those  of 
'  S.  Severus,  Hist.  Sacra.,  ii.  31. 


III.]  THE   CHURCH   OF  THE   ANASTASIS  189 

the  Martyrion  and  the  Anastasis  which  were 
connected  by  a  court.  They  are  spoken  of 
by  Euseblus  as  "a  temple"  raised  by  the 
Emperor,  in  order  to  be  a  conspicuous  monu- 
ment of  the  Saviour's  resurrection/  The 
Church  of  the  Anastasis — otherwise  known 
as  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre — was 
completed  about  a.d.  335,  and  was  then 
officially  announced  to  the  Christian  world 
as  covering  the  long-lost  and  newly-found 
site  of  the  Saviour's  tomb. 

It  is  a  significant  fact  that  for  the  first 
three  hundred  years  after  the  crucifixion 
no  interest  appears  to  have  been  taken  in 
the  supposed  sites  of  Golgotha  or  the  tomb, 
and  they  were  even  lost  sight  of. 

In  A.D.  335  Constantine  established  a  cultus 
of  them  after  their  miraculous  discovery. 

Before  another  four  hundred  years  were 
past  doubts  had  already  begun  to  arise  in 
the  minds  of  many  of  the  Palestine  pilgrims 
as  to  their  authenticity,  added  to  the  fact 
that  they  were  inside  the  city.  These  doubts 
seem  first  to  have  been  voiced  by  Willibald, 
who  about  a.d.  750,  writes  that  "Calvary 
was  formerly  outside  Jerusalem,  but  Helena, 
'  Eusebius,  Life  of  Constantine.,  iii.  40. 


igO  THE   HOLY   SEPULCHRE  [Lect. 

when  she  found  the  cross,  arranged  that 
place  so  as  to  be  within  the  city."  ^ 

From  that  time  onwards  we  find  the 
question  being  raised  at  intervals  until  1738, 
when  a  bookseller  of  Altona,  Korte  by 
name,  went  to  Palestine  to  study  the  sacred 
places,  and  as  the  result  of  his  journey 
wrote  a  book  entirely  rejecting  Constantine's 
sites.'^  Since  then  their  authenticity  has  been 
questioned  with  both  vigour  and  scholarship, 
while  at  the  same  time  numerous  places  have 
been  suggested  all  more  or  less  unlikely. 

The  most  widely  known  and  popular 
theory  is  that  of  Otto  Thenius  and  his 
followers,  who  would  like  to  identify  the  so- 
called  "Skull  Hill"  and  the  quarry  below  it 
—  commonly  known  as  El  -  Edhemiyeh  or 
"Jeremiah's  Grotto"  —  with  Golgotha  and 
the  tomb.  Unfortunately  General  Gordon, 
who  was  po  archaeologist,  was  immensely 
taken  with  it  and  vigorously  advocated  it, 
but  from  a  purely  mystical  and  fanciful  point 
of  view,  which  cannot  for  one  moment 
carry  any  weight.  There  is  not  a  shred  of 
evidence  either  direct  or  indirect,  to  favour 
the  idea  that  one  of  the  meanest  tombs  in 

*  Palestine  Pilgrims'  Texts,  iii. 

2  Korte,  Reise  nach  den  Weiland  gelobte  Lande. 


III.]  TRUE    SITES   LOST  19I 

the  cemetery  outside  Jerusalem,  excavated 
in  an  old  disused  stone  quarry,  and  possess- 
ing unmistakable  Christian  details,  can  ever 
have  been  the  "Garden  Tomb"  of  the 
wealthy  councillor,  Joseph  of  Arimathsea. 

Although  we  are  not  justified  in  positively 
asserting  that  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre,  the  Garden  Tomb,  and  the  various 
other  suggested  places  are  not  any  of  them 
the  sacred  tomb,  yet  there  are  strong  archaeo- 
logical and  historical  reasons  for  thinking 
that  they  cannot  be  the  authentic  sites. 

My  own  belief  is  that  the  knowledge  of 
the  sacred  places  has  been  lost,  and  will 
remain  so  for  ever. 


INDEX 


ABSOLVO,  126,  128 
Academies,  the  Palestinian,  41 
Accusatio,  the,  128 
Accusation,  the,  iii,  167,  170 
^lia,  the  city  of,  179,  180 
Agrippa  I.,  55 
Ai,  the  people  of,  152 
Akiba,  the  Rabbi,  41,  43 
Alexander  the  Great,  151-154 

of  Cappadocia,  186 

Annas,  61-64 

Antipas,  Herod,  103 

Antonia,  the  Castle  of,  30,  loi,  108 

Arbor  infelix,  150,  154 

Archelaus,  55,  102 

Arrest,  Jewish  law  of,  30,  31,  32 

Babylonian  bas-reliefs,  151 
Barabbas,  116 
Bar  Cocheba,  179,  185 
Bedikoth,  87 
Bema,  the,  108,  124 
Bernard  the  Pilgrim,  136 
Bethany,  23 
Bct-ha-Sekala,  the,  84 
Blasphemy,  89,  96 

,  punishment  for,  19 

"Book  of  Adam,"  144 
Booths  of  Annas,  62 

C^SAREA  STRATONIS,   IOI 

Caiaphas,  23,  47,  63,  67,  90-92, 

no 
"Carrying  the  Cross,"  134 
Chlamys,  the,  131 


XiX/apxos,  27,  28,  29 

Christ,  outline  of  ministry,  5-1 1 ; 
fulfilled  the  law,  11  ;  the 
Reformer,  14  ;  accusations 
against,  18 ;  attempts  on  life 
of,  19-22 ;  orders  for  arrest 
of,  23-25  ;  watched  by  spies, 
24  ;  the  arrest  of,  27  et  seq. 

Christians,  flight  of  the,  178 ; 
return  of  the,  179 

Church  of  the  Anastasis,  189 

Cicero,  154 

Citizen,  privileges  of  a  Roman, 
127 

Claudia  Procula,  103 

Cohort,  a,  27,  28 

Condentno,  129 

Condemnation  of  Christ,  93,  125 

Constantine,  181,  182,  185 

,  Life  of,  183 

Cornus,  the,  159 

Crimen  Lesce  divina,  18,  19 

majesiatis,  112 

Crispus,  182 

Cross,  different  forms  of,  157 

Crown  of  thorns,  the,  132 

Cruciarius,  150 

Crucifixion,  hour  of  the,  133  ; 
site  of  the,  147  ;  origin  of, 
150  ;  a  lingering  death,  155  ; 
nailing  of  hands  and  feet,  159- 
165  ;  early  representations  of, 
165  ;  administration  of 
anodyne,  167 ;  piercing  of 
side,  163,  171 

[93  2  B 


194 


INDIiX 


Crurifragium,  the,  171 

Crux,  the,  151 

Cyril  of  Jerusalem,  136 

Death  of  Christ,  148,  149 
Dedication,  feast  of,  22 
Discrepancies  in  Gospels,  33-34 
Dream,    the,    of   Pilate's    wife, 

117,  118 
Dupin,  98 

Edfou,  152 
Elders,  the,  45 
Eleazar,  the  Rabbi,  43 
Eliezer  ben  Hyrcanus,  59 
Ephraim,  city  of,  24 
Epictctus,  4 
Epiphanius,  141,  179 
Eusebius,  141,  180,  183 
Excusatio,  the,  12S 

"Father    of    tlie    House    of 

Justice,"  the,  46 
Fausta,  182 
Felix,  126 
Festus,  126 
Fimiilian,  186 
Flagellation,  mode  of,  134 
Frankincense,  166 

Galilee,  14 
Gall,  166 

Gallio,  Annreus,  no 
Gamaliel,  the  Rabbi,  26,  41,  47 
Gazith,  26 
Gerizim,  Mt.,  105 
Germanicus,  103 
Gibeonites,  the,  153 
Golgotha,     135    et    set].,    180; 

possible    site    of,    137,    138  ; 

origin   of   name,     140,    141  ; 

legends  of,  142-145 
Gordon's  Tomb,  191 
Gregory  Nazianzen,  164 

Hadrian,  179 

Hakiroth,  87 

"  Hall  of  Ilcwn  Stones,"  the,  50 


"Hanging  up,"  152,  153 
Hannasi,  Kabbi  Jehuda,  41 
Hasidcans,  the,  52 
Hasmon;vans,  the,  100 
Helena,  184,  1S7 
Hellenisers,  the,  52,  54 
Herod,  55,  61,  103,  119 
Herodians,  8,  10 
High  priest,  the,  63 
Hillel,  the  Rabbi,  41,  47,  52 

Impaling,  151 
Interrogation  the,  128 

Jamnia,  44,  52 

feremiah's  grotto,  191 

lews,  the,  12;  their  religion, 
12;  their  government,  13; 
conquest  by  Rome,  13  ; 
privileges  of  the,  17,  99,  100, 
102 ;  a  theocratic  common- 
wealth, 18  ;  banished  from 
Jerusalem,  180,  1S5 

Jerusalem,  44 ;  government  of, 
100,  loi  ;  destruction  of,  179, 
185;  a  Roman  colony,  180; 
pilgrimages  to,  186 

John  Hyrcanus,  56 

John  the  Baptist,  1 5 

Jonathan,  153 

Jos(^  ben  Chalaftha,  149 

Joseph,  152 

josephus,  4,  53,  56,  62,  104 

Joshua,  153 

Judas  Iscariot,  25 

Judge,  qualifications  of,  79 

Judges,  the,  46,  48 

Judgment,  how  arrived  at,  83 

Jupiter  Capitolinus,  temple  of, 
180 

Jus  g/adii,  the,  99 

KoRTfc,  190 

Law,  the,  10,  42 
,  Jewish,  35 


INDEX 


195 


Law,  Jewish,  two  fundamental 

principles,  20,  21 
Lazarus,  22,  24 
Legion,  the  tenth,  178 
Lithostroton,  the,  124 
Loisy,  30 
Lucian,  4 

Macarius,  184,  187 

,  Bishop,  181 

Mairnonides,  36,  95,  98 
Martha,  7 

Martyrion,  the,  189 
Mary,  7 
Mastahah,  173 
Meir,  Rabbi,  42 
Melito  of  Sardis,  186 
Mesith,  a,  24,  60 
Messiah,  the,  15 

,  rejection  of,  95,  124 

Mishna,  the,  30,  35,  37,  39,  40 
Mommscn,  36,  98 
Monachus,  Alexander,  182 
Money  trials,  77 
Mofts  Calvaria,  136 
Myrrh,  166 

NiCODEMUS,  7,   20,  21 

Nisan,  31 
Non  liquet,  126 

Oath,  form  of,  80 
Olives,  Mount  of,  180,  181 
Onias  IIL,  51 
Opium  poppy,  the,  167 
Origen,  140 

Palace  of  the  high  priest,  68 

of  Hasmonaians,  108 

of  Herod,  108 

Palus,  151 
Passover,  the,  24 
PaHbulum,  134,  158 
Perjury,  punishment  of,  83 
Pharisees,  7,  10,  14,  16,  51,  54 
Philo,  105 

Pilate,  Pontius,  5,  23,   62,  67, 
102  e(  seq.,  125 


Pilate's  failure,  ro6,  116 

question,  113 

Pliny,  4 

Posca,  170 

Prsetorium,  the,  108,  113 

,  138 

Priests,  high,  the,  13 

QuiRlNlus,  P.  S.,  61,  102 

Rabbinowicz,  98 
Recognitio,  128 

,  the  right  of,  99,  1 1 1 

Reform,  10 

Renan,  E.,  12 

Reprieve,  85 

Rizpah,  153 

Roman  criminal  procedure,  125- 

127 
policy  towards  conquered 

people,  127 
Rosadi,  37,  98 
Rufmus,  183 

Sacrilege,  89 

Sadducees,  8,  10,  16,  45,  54,  57, 

lOI 

Salvador,  36,  65,  95,  98 

Samaritans,  104 

Sanhedrin,  31,  32,  37,  44^/5*^., 

62,  65,  94 
,   council  of,   23  ;   election 

to,    45,    46  ;    meeting  -  place 

of,  50  ;  method  of  voting,  50  ; 

minor,   44 ;  powers  of,  25  et 

^^9-i  97  ;  session  of,  33  ;  the 

tractate,  39 
Saul,  153 

Scarlet  robe,  the,  131 
Scourging,  120-122 
Scribes,  10,  57,  60 
Sedile  excessus,  the,  159 
Sepulchre,  Church  of  the,  173 

,  the  Holy,  180 

,  Holy,  site  of  lost,  184 

, ,  cultus  of,  189 

,  ,  miraculous  finding 

of,  182,  ei  seq.  187 


196 


INDEX 


Sequence  of  events,  70  et  seq. 
Sheds,  the,  51 
Shema,  the,  39 
Shoterim,  29,  49 
Simeon,  43 
Simon,  47 

,  the  guardian,  51 

of  Kyrene,  133 

Socrates,  183 

Sopherim,  57 

Sorcery,  89 

Sozomen,  183 

(Tireipa,  the,  27,  28,   29,  131 

St  Augustine,  144 

Gregory  Nazianzen,  136 

Paul,  126 

Pudenziana,    the    Basilica 

of,  135 
(TTavpos,  the,  1 5 1,  1 58 
Stoning,  84 
arpaTTiyds,  the,  28' 
Students,  law,  49 
Suetonius,  4 
Sulpicius,  Severus,  183,  187 

Tacitus,  4,  5 
Talmud,  the,  4,  38,  39 
Tannaim,  the,  42 
Tarphon,  the  Rabbi,  43 
Temple  guard,  the,  29 
Thenius,  Otto,  190 
Theodoret,  183 


Tiberias,  42,  52 

Tiberius,  5,  61,  159 

Tituhis,  the,  167 

Titus,  178 

Tomb  of  Joseph  of  Arimatha;a, 

137 
not  reverenced,  173,  175- 

178 
Torah,  the,  38 
Tradition,  59 
Treason  against  God,  18 
Trial,  the  Jewish,  72  et  seq. 

,  the  Roman,  108  et  seq. 

"  Trials  in  Souls,"  77 
Trilmnns,  the,  28,  29 
"True    Cross,"  the  finding   of 

the,  182,  187 

vTrripirai,  the,  20 

Valerius  Gratus,  61,  63,  67 

Verdict,  the,  115,  129 

Verres,  154 

Vespasian,  179 

Via  Dolorosa,  145,  147 

Vitellius,  105 

Washing,  the,  of  Pilate's  hands, 

1x8 
Wellhausen,  57 
Willibald,  189 
Wine,  sour,  170 
Witnesses,  65,  74-80 


PRINTED    AT   THK    HDINBURGH    I'KP.SS,    9   ANU    II    YOUNG   STKBUT. 


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The  trial  and  crucifixion  of  Jesus 

lllirill  nil  l«r ,?l?^'"'  Semmary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00057  2596 


